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THE STORY OF 
A GRAIN OF WHEAT 



BY 

WILLIAM C. EDGAR 

EDITOR NORTHWESTERN MILLER 



WITH FORTY I L LUSTRA TIOXS 



NEW YORK 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

1903 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS. 


Two Copies Received 


MAY 29 1903 


Copyright Entry 
CLASS £c XXo. No. 


COPY B. 









Copyright, 1903 
Bv D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

All rights reserved 






• • • • • 



.♦ .• .! • I « ! • 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 


PAGE 


I. 


Introductory 


9 


II. 


The Wheat Berry ..... 


16 


III. 


Early History of Wheat . 


29 


IV. 


Wheat in Modern Times 


44 


V. 


Britain the Great Wheat Mart 


57 


VI. 


Argentina as a Wheat-Grower . 


70 


VII. 


Wheat in the United States 


82 


VIII. 


The Wheat-Fields of To-day 


97 


IX. 


The Wheat-Fields of To-morrow 


in 


X. 


The Milling of Wheat 


131 


XI. 


Progress of Milling .... 


149 


XII. 


Transportation and Tariffs 


172 




Index 


193 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



The Old Mill at Winchester, England 

A Field of Wheat .... 

The Enemies of Wheat . 

Model of Wheat Blossom 

Model of Wheat Kernel . 

Wheat Market, Assouan, Egypt 

A Budapesth Elevator 

11 Hunger-Bread " . 

Russian Peasant Ploughing 

Loading Wheat, Argentina 

Interior of an Argentina Mill . 

Thrashing Wheat, America 

An American Primary Wheat Market 

American Country Elevator . 

An Oregon Elevator. Wheat handled in Sacks 

Fire-proof Tile Grain Tanks, America 

An American Elevator Town . 

A Steel Tank Elevator, America . 

Terminal Elevators, America . 

Feudal Mill, Bagatz, France. Erected 

An Assay of Bread . 

Quern. Isle of Man 

Ancient Swedish Mill 

Pompeian Mills .... 

Dutch Wind-mill .... 

Welsh Wind-mill .... 

The Milling District of Minneapolis 

Mill-stones grinding 

An American Operative Miller 

The La Croix Purifier 

Governor C. C. Washburn 

Mr. C. A. Pillsbury .... 

Mr. George H. Christian 

Mr. William H. Dun woody 

Modern Roller Mill 

Interior of a Modern Mill 

Small American Mill 

An American Country Mill 

Harvesting Wheat, India . . 



Frontispiece 



316 



15 
20 

25 

28 

35 
45 
62 

65 
74 

82 

85 
89 

93 

101 
109 

115 
119 
125 
132 

135 
138 
140 
143 
144 
145 
147 
150 
152 

157 
162 
162 
163 
163 
165 
167 
169 
171 
174 



THE 
STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 



CHAPTER I 

Introductory — Wheat's story — Early development — The 
black-bread era — The white-bread period — Further 
progress — The mission of wheat 

The writer does not claim to be an authority 
on wheat ; neither by scientific knowledge nor by 
exhaustive study is he qualified to thus approach 
the subject. His point of view is that of one who, 
glancing rapidly over the marvellous history of 
this king of cereals, and noting the development 
of its growth and usage to conform to the require- 
ments of modern civilization, is concerned more 
with the actual food problems of the present time 
and with questions touching the immediate future 
of the world's food supply than in the deeply allur- 
ing by-paths of chemical and botanical research 
or in the no less absorbing study of statistics, 
which sometimes leads even the wisest of the un- 
wary into many strange and bottomless pitfalls. 
Such lines of research must be left to the special- 
ist, and the literature concerning them is already 
extensive and growing greater with the increase of 
governmental inquiry and commercial progress. 

For the purpose of this story, we may leave 
the scientist in his laboratory and the compiler of 

9 



IO THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

statistics in the maze of figures with which he has 
surrounded himself, and so, touching but lightly 
upon the more profound phases of the subject, 
attempt to briefly narrate the achievements of 
the past in wheat culture, and reserve for more 
extensive consideration questions of vital interest 
to the bread-eaters of to-day. 

The story of a grain of wheat must be at the 
same time the story of a sack of flour and the 
story of a loaf of bread, in order to be at all com- 
prehensive, and yet we may not, for lack of space, 
dwell upon the technical making of flour or the 
baking of bread. Each of these subjects would 
require a book in itself, and many books there are, 
printed in various tongues, which treat of them. 
Wheat is flour, flour is bread, and bread is food, 
the chief of all foods; man's constant mainstay 
and support from time immemorial, the primary 
object in his struggle for existence. Food for the 
stomach takes precedence in the long list of man's 
demands upon the world, and bread has been the 
cry of the needy since history's beginning. 

The story of a grain of wheat tells the story 
of man's long-continued struggle for plenty ; the 
response of nature to her children asking for food ; 
the emergence of mankind from savagery, when, 
regardless of anything save the pangs of hunger, 
the first miller plucked the berry from the stalk 
and, using his teeth for mill-stones, ground grist 
for a customer who would not be denied — his 
stomach. 

Thence onward, growing more sophisticated 
and taught the need of forethought by dire expe- 
rience, man planted and reaped his slender crop 
by the most primitive of implements; he ground 
his poor stock of wheat in a rude mortar with a 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT II 

rugged pestle, putting by his stock of rudimentary 
flour against a time of need which was sure to 
come. Then came larger fields, planted in more 
generous measure and cultivated by clumsy yet 
still improving tools, with greater crops following 
more intelligent handling. Poor fields at best, 
telling a pathetic story, as we look back upon 
them from the civilization of to-day, yet dear to 
the pioneer farmer. Tilled sometimes by slaves 
driven to labour with blows; sweating and groan- 
ing at unending tasks. More happily, sometimes, 
by honest yeomen who first wrested their ground 
from nature and then defended their crops from 
the prowling beasts, from marauding bands of sol- 
diers, from the thief by night and the oppressor 
by day. Gaining at last a comparatively poor 
crop, from which, after paying tithes and taxes in 
ample measure, something — barely enough to 
keep body and soul together — was finally gar- 
nered and safely housed for the season's use. 
Then, to the miller of the day, with his creaking 
wind-mill grinding out the grist on ill-dressed 
stones, with clumsy machinery, curiously inade- 
quate; he, also, taking his share of the harvest 
for his labour. Thus came the era of black 
bread, coarse and dirty, fit only for strong teeth 
and the digestive apparatus of a rugged outdoor 
man. 

The black-bread times, when the flour of all 
save the very rich was dark and filled with the 
impurities incident to the primitive method of its 
milling. The black-bread times, when the peasant 
was overridden and crushed to earth by his domi- 
neering and arrogant rulers, merciless in their 
treatment of the toiler. Those old wheat-fields 
eloquent of man's inhumanity to man ; often beat- 



12 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

en to the ground by the tramp of armed hosts just 
as the beautiful berry was reaching its maturity. 
The peasant farmer and his wife and children 
emerging from concealment to witness the ruin of 
their season's hopes, thankful to encounter star- 
vation even, if they are left but a roof to cover 
them. Then the years of failure and blight, when 
both nature and man conspired against the wheat ; 
when drought and taxes scraped the fields bare, 
and the man who planted them, huddled hungry 
in his hut, thinking the murder and arson which 
later was acted to the ominous music of the fa ira. 
So, by natural ways, sowing the wind, reaping the 
whirlwind, to the oft-repeated and terrible cry of 
"Bread or blood!" mankind told the story of 
wheat in sanguinary and imperishable characters 
which future generations dare not disregard ; con- 
temporaneously writing the story of human lib- 
erty ; the striving to hold and enjoy that which 
the labour of man's hands had brought from the 
soil. 

Then, in this story of wheat, come brighter 
chapters with the dawn of a higher and better 
civilization, and the coming of less frequently 
interrupted peace. The beautiful wheat-fields of 
modern Britain extending all about comfortable 
homes, neat cottages, and noble mansions ; a land 
protected by just laws and governed wisely ; her 
people safely guarded against oppression from 
within and invasion from without. Rich fields 
tilled industriously and yielding abundantly; the 
work-ground of a happy people, who laboured 
to good effect. The grain taken to mills of some 
magnitude, cleaned and scoured on somewhat 
scientific principles; ground into flour on mill- 
stones; giving a beautiful golden product from 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 13 

which was made a bread as far superior to the black 
bread of the Continent, as was England's liberty 
to continental freedom. The miller, typified by 
him of the Dee, a man of influence and weight 
in his community, serene and prosperous. And 
all, from the farmer who planted to the miller 
who ground and the baker who baked, somewhat 
uplifted by having to do with King Wheat under 
favouring circumstances. 

Still pleasanter and more inspiring are the 
later and grander chapters in the wonderful tale of 
a grain of wheat, and what it has done for man. 
The story crosses a wide ocean and is taken up by 
that consistent wheat-grower, the Anglo-Saxon, in 
a newer and wider and even freer land. The chap- 
ter on America, still open and continuing, tells of 
the march of the pioneer from east to west, always 
accompanied by a larger expanse of wheat-fields; 
of records made in wheat production only to be 
broken by other and still greater ones; of a new 
nation reaching out to feed an older world ; of 
vast systems of railway and steamship transporta- 
tion created in response to an increasing demand 
for bread abroad and a steadily growing produc- 
tion of wheat at home ; of crops unparalleled in the 
world's history for magnitude and quality ; of 
enormous fields cultivated by machinery of mar- 
vellous ingenuity; of gigantic mills, elaborated 
and scientific of process, grinding day and night 
with rank upon rank of steel rolls, a product of 
surpassing colour and quality, purified of all dele- 
terious or unclean substances, being the purest 
and most nourishing food ever provided for the 
human race, making an idealbread, healthful, clean, 
and strength-producing, the food of the twentieth 
century, the climax of the white-bread era. 



x 



14 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

Moving still onward and never resting even as 
man's ambitions never sleep, the story of wheat 
goes forward. Yesterday a wilderness, to-day 
the abode of the pioneer, to-morrow a waving 
field of grain. Northward over the boundary of 
the United States into the Canadian northwest, 
spreading over lands but recently supposed to be 
valueless, marches on the King of Cereals, bring- 
ing civilization and law and order and justice 
with him. A thousand, fifteen hundred, two thou- 
sand miles to the north and west and still are 
found wheat-fields yielding phenomenal crops of 
superb quality. This is the latest achievement in 
the white-bread era, and men are wondering how 
many more thousands of acres are available for 
the culture of this plant before the word finis is 
written. 

The climax of development thus far in the 
white-bread era is found in the spectacle afforded 
by one of the great flour manufacturing plants of 
the time, employing hundreds of skilled millers, 
driven by powerful engines with steam or water 
power or both, equipped with every mechanical 
device which can contribute to the quality of the 
product or the cheapness of operation, humming, 
throbbing, and thrilling with industrial life, oper- 
ating steadily the year around and producing from 
five to ten thousand barrels of flour daily. Con- 
trast this with the poor, fitful wind-mill of the 
black-bread age with its meagre equipment of 
primitive machinery and its miller or tw T o, and 
some idea is gained of man's progress in the mat- 
ter of flour-making. 

Perhaps a more striking contrast even than 
this is the picture of a modern field of wheat just 
ready for harvest. Five thousand acres given over 



16 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

exclusively to wheat-raising. Stretching in every 
direction as far as the eye can see, one unbroken, 
waving mass of grain. The sight is glorious and 
inspiring, and when the mind recalls the little 
patch of doubtful grain, brought from the soil 
by arduous, unintermittent, unintelligent labour; 
dwarfed, insignificant, harried and threatened, 
and yet pathetically precious to the peasant wheat- 
grower of the black-bread period, the soul is 
lifted up, and the glorious story of a grain of 
wheat is told without words in a picture painted 
by the hand of a gracious Almighty, who, through 
the ages of oppression and fear, has brought forth 
his people to be witnesses of his greatness through 
the hand of man and the bounty of nature. 

Thus the tale of wheat is ever the story of 
man's achievement with God's help, each chapter 
marking an upward step in human progress, an 
advance in knowledge, science, and civilization ; 
finally triumphing in a brotherhood of man where- 
in the east may be hungry but the west will not 
let her starve. Interdependent, the nations shall 
feed each other, and wheat will continue its beau- 
tiful mission of peace and good-will; and there 
will be no more hunger in all the world. 



CHAPTER II 

The wheat berry — Chemically and botanically considered 
— Its enemies, diseases, and pests 

Botanically, wheat belongs to the grass 
family and is in fact a modified form of grass. Its 
pedigree shows it to have some rather disrepu- 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 1 7 

table near relatives ; certain weeds of doubtful rep- 
utation and some worthless plants, such as wild 
rye and wild barley ; indeed quack-grass is only 
five places removed from the worthy hero of this 
story. On the other hand, wheat is closely rela- 
ted to a number of valuable forage crops, such 
as its English cousin, rye-grass. 

There are four main divisions in the family of 
wheat : common wheat, dwarf and hedgehog wheat, 
English and Egyptian wheat, and flint wheat, to 
which the durum varieties belong. Each of these 
divisions, or sub-races, is again divided into a num- 
ber of varieties which have been produced, prob- 
ably, by crossing the sub-races. There is only 
one form of wheat known in a wild condition ; 
this is quite different from ordinary wheat and is 
called one-grain wheat. 

The family of wheat is not only very noble, but 
it is also a very ancient one indeed. It is difficult 
to estimate with any degree of accuracy the length 
of time it has been used as food by man. Archae- 
ologists contend that it was thus utilized in pre- 
historic days. The stone age probably knew it. 
It has been found in the ruins of the ancient lake- 
dwellers of west Switzerland, and discovered in 
the remains of Egyptian civilization. The learned 
Chinese, who seem to have a more or less valid 
claim for the original patent on almost every- 
thing in modern use, modestly state that wheat 
was grown in China some 2,700 years before the 
beginning of the Christian era. Undoubtedly, 
wheat has undergone many changes in form, prop- 
erties, and characteristics during the time it has 
been cultivated by man, but the fact that it claims 
a record of more than 4,600 years of faithful serv- 
ice to mankind is the best evidence of its ster- 



1 8 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

\ 

ling character and value as food. It is only during 
recent years and in America that the claims of 
certain base pretenders to the honoured place 
occupied for the ages by the wheat family have 
been put forward, and as these claims are advanced 
by alleged " health-food " manufacturers for pur- 
poses of personal gain, and are not indorsed by 
reputable scientists, it is quite safe to class them 
with the innumerable past attempts of faddists 
and quacks to overcome long-established usage, 
and to predict that as long as the human race in- 
habits the earth, wheat will hold first place in the 
list of valuable foods. ' 

Wheats from different sources vary in many 
respects; white, red, and amber in colour; wheats 
with large and wheats with small kernels, and 
wheat weighing from 55 to 65 pounds for a meas- 
ured bushel. When converted into flour and 
made into bread even greater differences appear. 
Certain wheats make larger and whiter loaves 
than others, and there are differences of colour 
and taste which are noticeable. When the causes 
of all these variations are examined into it is 
found that while all wheats have the same gen- 
eral chemical composition, they vary to some ex- 
tent in the amounts of different ingredients which 
they contain. Even in a single variety, some of 
the kernels are larger than others and more ma- 
ture, some may be shrunken, wrinkled, bleached, 
frosted, or perhaps germinated or " bin-burned." 
It may be afflicted with fungus diseases or show 
the ravages of insects. In fact, during its growth, 
wheat is subject to many ailments and adverse 
climatic conditions which have an unfavourable 
effect upon the bread made from it. 

To a considerable extent, science has come to 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 1 9 

the assistance of the wheat-grower and has shown 
how some of the difficulties in the way of perfect 
wheat can be overcome, and how the spread of 
fungus diseases and insect pests can be checked. 
For example, smut is a fungus disease trans- 
mitted from the parent seed to its offspring. 
When smutty wheat is sown as seed the crop 
becomes infested with the disease. If, before 
sowing, the wheat is treated with certain chemi- 
cals, wheat medicine so to speak, the smut spores 
are destroyed and the spread of the disease is pre- 
vented. Again, the black rust of wheat is a par- 
asitic disease in which the leaves become gradu- 
ally covered with brownish black spots which 
spread from small infested centres. Under favour- 
able climatic conditions, this epidemic may spread 
and involve the entire plant and even cause a loss 
of the crop. A study of this disease has shown 
that, in one of the stages of its development, the 
parasitic growth lives for a time upon another 
and entirely different plant, the barberry, and if 
this barberry be not at hand, the cycle of growth 
cannot be completed. Outbreaks of black or 
summer rust have been directly traced to the bar- 
berry, and it is well established that this fungus 
growth lives part of its life on this plant just as 
the trichina and tape-worm spend part of their 
existence in the body of some animal such as the 
pig. Having discovered the cause of this de- 
structive enemy to the wheat family, science finds 
a cure in removing barberries from wheat-grow- 
ing sections. 

The family of wheat is not only subject to 
disease and sickness, but it has an army of ene- 
mies ready at all times to seize upon a favourable 
opportunity to attack and if possible overcome 




The Enemies of Wheat. 

Chinch-bugs in different stages of growth. A single egg is shown 
in a, and others on the roots and a lower leaf ; in b is shown a 
very young bug, and in c, d, and e the later stages, while f 
shows the adult and mature insect. The natural size of the 
bugs is shown on the stems of the plant. 

20 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 21 

it. Grasshoppers, chinch-bugs, army-worms, and 
frit and Hessian flies are its most destructive 
ravagers. Here again science has interposed to 
good effect between wheat and its insect enemies. 
The deadly grasshopper is kept within bounds, 
and outbreaks of this kind are far less numerous 
and ruinous than in former years. Large areas of 
wheat are saved by means of a machine termed in 
America the " hopperdozer." This rakes over the 
ground, collects the grasshoppers and introduces 
them to kerosene oil which destroys them. When 
the eggs of the grasshopper have been laid, the 
land is ploughed and the egg-case is inverted, con- 
sequently the infant insect is not able to make its 
way into the world. The ploughing of land infested 
with grasshoppers has proved to be the most ef- 
fectual way of fighting this enemy. 

Scientists have experimented with the intro- 
duction of fungus diseases among grasshoppers. 
Insects, like animals of higher order, are subject 
to disease. Some of these sicknesses are para- 
sitic in form, and if the germ of the disease can be 
introduced and spread about in the fields, the 
healthy grasshoppers soon become diseased and 
die. The ravages of the chinch-bug have, under 
favourable circumstances, been held in check by 
this method of treatment. The spores or seeds of 
a fungus disease which attacks the chinch-bug can 
be grown upon other materials, such as beef broth 
or corn-meal, and a stock of these diseased germs 
can be kept on hand. In case of an attack of the 
insects, the ground being moist and conditions 
favourable, these germs can be introduced into the 
soil, and are capable of spreading and causing 
disease among the healthy, active chinch-bugs. 
This method of spreading disease among insects 




The Enemies of Wheat. 

Grasshoppers, three-fourths natural size, a, Single egg ; r, egg 
masses, closed and opened ; g, male ; h, female. Lesser migra- 
tory locust : b, pupa ; e, male, d, female. 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 23 

has been effectual at times, but, as in the case of 
all contagious diseases, the spread is dependent 
upon favourable conditions. Ravages of other in- 
sects such as the frit-fly are combated by burn- 
ing the stubble ; this destroys the eggs of the in- 
sect. In the prevention of fungus diseases and 
insect attacks, the same principles are employed 
as in the prevention and treatment of human dis- 
eases. The cause of disease is first ascertained, 
and its prevention or treatment is dependent 
upon some characteristic weakness of the para- 
sitic body. 

It will be observed that the wheat family, as 
behooves so ancient and conservative a house, re- 
pels the attacks of sickness by active and positive 
old-school medicines, and that the principles of 
Christian Science have not been applied to any 
extent in the elimination of wheat diseases. It is 
a fact, however, that during an outbreak of grass- 
hoppers in Minnesota in 1877, the Governor of 
the State appointed April 26 as a day of fasting 
and prayer and urged the people " in the shadow 
of the locust plague, whose impending renewal 
threatens desolation of the land," to " humbly in- 
voke for the efforts we make in our defence the 
guidance of that hand which alone is adequate to 
stay 'the pestilence that walketh in darkness and 
the destruction that wasteth at noonday.' " The 
Governor's proclamation caused much comment 
and some adverse criticism. Clergymen read it 
from their pulpits, and in solemn tones exhorted 
the people to assemble together for prayer on the 
day appointed. The 26th of April arrived, shops 
and other places of business were closed, the 
church-bells announced the hour of service and, 
deeply impressed by the unusual character of the 



24 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

occasion, to which the extraordinary quiet of the 
day contributed, the people, Protestant and Cath- 
olic alike, walked soberly to church and there 
prayed fervently to the Almighty for help and 
succour against the threatened devastation of their 
wheat crop, which, at that time, was of vital im- 
portance to the welfare of the struggling farmers, 
who had suffered severely from grasshoppers the 
previous year. 

A strange thing followed, strange but true, as 
thousands of living witnesses can prove. April 
27, the day following the day of prayer, the sun 
shone over the entire State bright and clear and 
with extraordinary heat. The warmth was like 
midsummer. It penetrated the moist earth and 
there found the larvae of millions upon millions 
of grasshoppers. Stimulated and quickened by 
the heat, the infant enemies of wheat came to the 
earth and crawled about the surface in countless 
myriads, enough to destroy not only the crop of 
Minnesota, but that of the entire northwest. The 
visitation of the year previous was nothing com- 
pared with the vast army of crawling locusts 
which now came forth from the earth. For a few 
days the unseasonable weather continued, then 
suddenly it grew colder and one night there w T as 
a severe frost, the earth was frozen and with it 
the hatched and unhatched grasshoppers. In a 
few days it thawed again, but the pests had gone, 
and the wheat crop was saved from its enemies. 
It is true that since 1877 there have been no 
grasshoppers worth worrying about in Minnesota. 

Not only is the wheat family assailed by dis- 
ease and hostile armies, but, should it escape 
these, it still has to struggle for existence because 
moisture and proper food materials in the soil are 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 



2 5 



often lacking. The growth of the wheat-plant 
from seed to maturity is one constant series of 
chemical changes. The various food elements in 
the form of mineral matter, such as potash, phos- 
phate, lime and magnesia salts, together with the 
water and nitrogenous compounds, are taken from 
the soil, while the carbon is obtained entirely from 
the air. The leaf is the manufacturing plant or 
chemical laboratory where all of the various 
changes take place, and 
where the different com- 
pounds, including starch, 
gluten, and oil, are elab- 
orated. The materials that 
are produced in the leaf are 
finally stored in the seed as 
nourishment for the future 
wheat-plant. Climatic con- 
ditions, the nature of the 
soil, and the character of 
the seed are the main fac- 
tors which determine the 
properties and individuality 
of the wheat. 

Wheat grown on fertile 
soils, in northern latitudes 
with a short but forcing 

season of growth, develops Model of Wheat Blossom. 

more glutinous matter and 

less starch than wheat grown on poorer soils and 
in latitudes where the period of growth is pro- 
longed. The same general laws which influence 
the growth and development of animal bodies are 
also noticeable in the growth of wheat. For ex- 
ample, in all young and growing animals there is 
first developed a framework of bone and muscle 




26 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

if proper food is supplied. After the framework 
is developed the addition of more food causes the 
animal to undergo the fattening process. The ani- 
mal will prematurely fatten if not properly fed. So 
with the wheat plant, the earlier stages of growth 
are devoted largely to the building up of the ni- 
trogenous or glutinous compounds corresponding 
to the framework of the animal ; while the later 
stages of growth are given over principally to the 
formation of the starch, which corresponds to the 
fattening period of the animal. If the normal de- 
velopment of the wheat is in any way checked, 
the kernels may appear prematurely fattened and 
lack strength, or slightly shrunken and shriveled, 
because the fattening of the kernels has not taken 
place. 

The chemical changes which take place in the 
leaves of the growing plant are the results of life 
processes, and, like all similar changes, are not 
well understood. As soon as the seed passes its 
germinating stage, which it does rapidly when 
grown under normal conditions, the roots and 
leaves are produced and then the food from both 
soil and air is absorbed and elaborated into plant 
tissue. By the time the leaves are five inches 
high the first roots are about twenty inches in 
length, and develop rapidly in all directions. Some 
appear to be especially designed to give mechan- 
ical strength and support to the plant, while each 
individual rootlet is covered with a large number 
of root hairs which come in contact with the soil 
and absorb food. These root hairs are thick or 
thin in places according to the amount of plant 
food in the different layers of soil. The spike, 
which later bears the grain, is discernible even in 
the early stages of growth, and develops within 






THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 27 

the hollow cylindrical stem which is connected by 
joints and internodes. If conditions are favour- 
able, the grain " stools/' and a number of stems 
or branches are developed. As the plant grows 
and larger leaves are produced, the earlier leaves 
become less active and give up their substance to 
the plant, the heads are unwrapped from their 
leafy covering and the grain passes through the 
various ripening stages to maturity. The blos- 
soming stage is one of the most interesting periods 
in the development of the plant. The floret is 
complete in itself, having all the parts and organs 
of an ordinary flower, including ovule, stamens, 
pistils, filaments, anthers, and pollen. 

Wheat is self-fertilizing, and at flowering time 
the anthers are pushed upward ; they break open 
and the pollen grains fall on the stigma. Never- 
theless some scattering of the pollen occurs, dur- 
ing fertilization, and a sufficient opening of the 
flowers takes place to allow occasional cross-fer- 
tilization. By means of removing the pollen from 
one variety of wheat to the ovules of another, 
cross-breeding is accomplished, which has resulted 
in the production of a number of new and promis- 
ing varieties. 

A mature wheat kernel is a single seed en- 
closed in tightly fitting walls. During growth 
the lateral portions of the seed fold inward and 
the seed elongates, forming a fold or groove upon 
its upper surface. The covering known as the bran 
scale consists of three parts: the outer skin or coars- 
est part of the bran, an inner double skin, and a 
thin, hard, transparent layer. Inside of the bran, 
another layer of cells, called the aleurone cells, is 
found. The flour cells, found within the bran, and 
the aleurone layers constitute nearly eighty-four 



28 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

per cent of the wheat kernel, of which about sev- 
enty-five per cent is recovered as flour, which is 
composed of starch, gluten, and other nutriments. 
The germ, or embryo plant, is found at the lower 
end of the kernel, and is sur- 
rounded by reserved food ma- 
terials. When the wheat is 
made into flour a mechanical 
separation of the different 
parts takes place, the germ 
and bran layers are removed, 
and the flour cells are granu- 
lated. 

It is estimated that, under 
ordinary conditions, it will re- 
quire about two square feet of 
land to produce enough wheat 
for one loaf of bread weigh- 
ing a pound. Since the 
amount of wheat used in the 
aggregate is large, and is in- 
creasing faster than the popu- 

Model of Wheat Kernel. , . ° r ». . , r r 

lation, a few political econo- 
mists have feared that in a half century or so there 
will be a wheat famine from exhaustion of the soil 
and other causes. A careful examination of the 
facts do not warrant such a conclusion. There is 
no more danger of a wheat famine than there is 
of a grass famine, to which family wheat belongs. 
Extensive wheat-fields in the Canadian northwest 
are now coming into cultivation and producing 
wheat in quantity and quality far beyond the most 
sanguine anticipations, from a source which only 
a few years ago was considered unproductive. 
Large tracts of land in the United States suitable 
for wheat-growing are still uncultivated. In ad- 




THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 29 

dition to these resources, and the possibilities of 
Argentina and other wheat-producing countries, 
there is an enormous area in America formerly 
wheat-producing and now utilized for other and 
more profitable crops, which merely awaits the 
stimulus of a greater demand and consequent 
higher price to revert to wheat production. While 
such conditions exist it is impossible to estimate 
how long it will be before the limit of the world's 
wheat production is reached. There is every rea- 
son to believe that in the future the supply of 
wheat will increase, and that it will be more ex- 
tensively used in the dietary than it has been 
during the past forty-six hundred years of its his- 
tory. 



CHAPTER III 

Early history of wheat — The problem of its birthplace — 
Region of the Euphrates and its claims — Egyptian 
wheat — A discredited legend — An American wheat 
sensation — Biblical references 

In the preceding chapter it has been said that 
the origin of wheat finds no exact date in history; 
that the Chinese knew it and used it for food 
twenty-seven hundred years before the Christian 
era, and that it is reasonably certain that for more 
than forty-six hundred years it has been a human 
food. Grant Allen, the naturalist and novelist, 
has termed wheat " a degraded lily," using the ad- 
jective in its scientific sense, but how and through 
what transformations this cereal passed from the 
decorative stage of the lily to its present condi- 
tion has not been vouchsafed to us. 



30 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

Can wheat grow wild ? This question was 
asked by the Chaldean priest Berosus more than 
twenty-five centuries ago, and has often been de- 
bated by modern scientists. Botanists have vexed 
their souls over it for years. There is slight if 
any reason for believing that wheat, as we under- 
stand the word, can grow and continue to grow 
unaided by man. Berosus is quoted as saying 
that, in his time, wheat grew wild in the valleys 
between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris. In re- 
cent times, M. Frederic Houssay claimed to have 
discovered wild wheat in a mountainous district 
to the east of Kurdistan, but much doubt has 
been thrown on this statement. Early in the 
nineteenth century, another French traveller, 
Olivier, brought home a circumstantial account 
of wheat, spelt, and barley growing together and 
apparently wild in a district northwest of Anah, 
on the right bank of the Euphrates. These cereals 
were discovered by him in a wild and desolate 
country, where one would not have expected to 
find cultivation of any kind. With regard to this 
testimony, which supporters of the theory of the 
wild origin of wheat have often and triumphantly 
cited, it may be remarked that Olivier, beyond 
the fact that he had observed the three cereals in 
question growing in a wild and out-of-the-way 
spot, does not bring the slightest evidence to 
show that the plants were growing wild. That 
part of the world was then, as it is to-day, thinly 
inhabited, but it was constantly traversed by 
nomadic tribes, which, though still in the pastoral 
stage, and without fixed habitations, were quite 
capable of sowing on their outward way that they 
might reap on their return. The mere fact that 
wheat and barley were growing side by side in an 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 31 

uninhabited spot by no means proves that those 
cereals had not been planted by men for their 
use. 

Among old authors who have helped to en- 
courage the wild-wheat legend is Strabo, who was 
born just before the Christian era. He quotes 
Aristobulus as saying that on the banks of the 
Indus there grew wild a plant much like wheat. 
The same authority maintains that in his day 
grains shed from wheat spikes in Hircania would 
take root and grow wild; but of course the point 
to know is, did those plants degenerate and dis- 
appear, or continue from generation to genera- 
tions ? On this all-important matter Strabo is sig- 
nificantly silent. Botanists are generally agreed 
that, though wheat and other cereals, such as bar- 
ley, oats, and rye, may have been found growing 
apparently wild in lands where cultivation is al- 
ready known, such plants are only to be consid- 
ered as relapses. In other words, cereals growing 
under such conditions are no more to be classed 
as wild than men who have broken away from the 
restraints of civilized life and voluntarily returned 
to savagery can be classed as wild men in the true 
sense of the word. It is somewhat remarkable that 
no instances of wheat or of any other cereal grow- 
ing wild have ever been reported from really prim- 
itive lands : from countries having, virgin forests 
and occupied only by races not yet risen from the 
hunting stage. Universal experience has shown 
that to thrive cereals need the constant care of 
man. 

Before leaving this subject, it may be pointed 
out that more than one respectable authority has 
been misled by the superficial resemblance to 
wheat of certain grasses which are nothing better 



32 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

than weeds. A classical instance of this is found 
in the grave assertion of Diodorus Siculus, who 
lived at the commencement of the Christian era, 
to the effect that wheat was growing wild in his 
native land of Sicily. To-day there are no traces 
there of what can be properly termed wild w T heat, 
but many districts in which cultivation is light are 
overrun with a grass known as SEgilops ovata, in 
which some botanists have seen a distant but 
poor relation of wheat. The natives of Sicily to- 
day call this weed in their dialect frumentu sar- 
vaggiu, or wild wheat. This JEgilops ovata is not 
infrequently to be found growing beside wheat, 
especially in the south of Europe, where cultiva- 
tion is apt to be slipshod. That some varieties 
of the JEgilops germs are akin to cultivated 
wheats in the same sense that prairie wolves are 
related to terriers is freely admitted by bota- 
nists, including Hooker and Haeckel ; cultivated 
wheats of all varieties will intercross with many 
kinds of j£gilops y but the result is no more to be 
desired than the offspring of a wild wolf and a 
well-bred hound. The gulf to-day between wheat 
and the wild grasses of the JEgilops genus is too 
wide to be bridged, although the theory that in 
prehistoric ages all these diverse forms of grass 
came from one common ancestor is of course 
quite tenable. 

The cultivation of wheat is apparently coeval 
with the birth of civilization, using that term in 
the sense of the transition of primitive people 
from the nomadic to the settled life. It is remark- 
able that the origin of wheat is, in widely sepa- 
rated lands, the subject of identical mythical le- 
gends. The ancient Egyptians spoke of Osiris, 
the Nile god, as having taught the dwellers in the 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 33 

Nile valley the use of the plough. Greek and Ro- 
man mythology is full of tales of gods and demi- 
gods descending to earth to teach men the use of 
cereals and the construction of permanent dwell- 
ings. The Chinese, that people of ancient civili- 
zation, hold that wheat was a direct gift of 
heaven, and, as already stated, there is evidence 
to show that they cultivated this cereal twenty- 
seven hundred years before the Christian era. One 
of the most striking ceremonies of the Chinese 
court is the solemn ploughing of a field by the 
emperor in person ; this curious ceremonial was 
originally instituted by the Emperor Chin-nong or 
Shen-nung, as some scholars write his name, who 
drove the plough himself, as his successors do to 
this day, to pay practical homage to the dignity 
and value of agriculture. On this occasion the 
work of the plough is followed by the sowing of 
five kinds of seed, namely, wheat, rice, soy, sor- 
ghum, and setaria italica. 

The antiquity of wheat culture in Europe is 
beyond question. There is reason to believe 
that the lake-dwellers of Switzerland were grow- 
ing a kind of wheat at least as far back as the 
Homeric period ; remains of the grain they raised 
have been found and described by Mr. Heer, who 
gave it the name of T7-iticum vulgar e antiquorum. 
The grains of this wheat were very small, and 
though presenting great affinity to, are by no means 
identical with, any variety grown to-day. In Lom- 
bardy the archaeologists Regazzoni and Sordelli 
found a similar kind of grain buried among pre- 
historic remains. At Aggtelek in Hungary dis- 
coveries have been made of a prehistoric wheat, 
which is also of this variety, and is believed by 
antiquarians to have been grown in the stone age. 



34 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

The problem of the original home of wheat is 
obscure and probably unsolvable. Mesopotamia 
has been claimed as its native land, but the evi- 
dence in its favour does not appear strong enough 
for unhesitating acceptance. Herodotus, the gos- 
siping Greek historian, speaks of the marvellous 
fertility of this region, which yielded a hundred- 
fold to the sower of grain. This writer is an un- 
trustworthy guide at the best of times, but his 
story is an evidence of the good reputation of 
the Euphrates and Tigris valleys as wheat-fields 
in his day. 

M. De Candolle, in his Origin of Cultivated 
Plants, abandons the task of fixing upon the birth- 
place of the King of Cereals. Philology, as he ad- 
mits, affords but a slender clew in this case. The 
Chinese mai % the Sanskrit sumana and godhuma, the 
Hebrew chittah, Egyptian br, and other names, 
are all synonymous of wheat in the most ancient 
languages, but it may fairly be inferred that the 
cultivation of wheat, although primitive, ante- 
dates the most ancient tongues known to modern 
civilization. Altogether, since Mesopotamia seems 
to have the best claim to the distinction, it would 
seem permissible to consider the first wheat-fields 
known to history to have been situated there. 

To the student of the archaeology of wheat, 
Egypt, that land of prehistoric civilization, pre- 
sents a field of absorbing interest. That grain 
was grown and consumed by the ancient Egyp- 
tians is beyond question, but Egyptologists are 
divided as to the age of wheat culture in that 
country. Before setting forth the views, of the 
few scholars who have made a special study of 
ancient Egyptian agriculture, it may be remarked 
that each and all of these authorities are anterior 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 



35 



to the modern age of Egyptology, which barely 
dates back a quarter of a century. The discov- 
eries of Maspero and his school have greatly ex- 
tended Egyptian history, and have taken the story 




Wheat Market, Assouan, Egypt. 

of its civilization back to a very remote period. 
The origin of wheat culture in Egypt must re- 
main, it is to be feared, as obscure a problem as 
that of the original home of this cereal. Some 
authorities doubt the use of wheat or of any grain 
by the aboriginal inhabitants of the Nile valley. 
The primitive men who lived by the banks of the 
Nile before the formation of the delta are sup- 
posed to have lived on fish and plants of the lotus 
variety. But the formation of the delta is dated 
back by geologists quite twenty thousand years, 



$6 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

and an antiquity of half that period for wheat and 
barley would be a respectable pedigree. Dr. 
Budge, the head of the Egyptian department at 
the British Museum, is not inclined to believe 
that wheat is indigenous in Egypt or that it was 
grown there in very ancient times. He does be- 
lieve, however, that in prehistoric days a red grain 
was cultivated, which he is inclined to identify 
with barley, though this seems questionable. The 
white wheat which was grown in the later days of 
Egyptian civilization is, in his opinion, clearly an 
exotic. He thinks it may have come from Asia. 

In dealing with Egyptian archaeology it be- 
hooves a searcher to step warily, because recent 
discoveries have revolutionized Egyptian chro- 
nology, and it must be admitted that even to- 
day specialists in Egyptian lore are by no means 
unanimous on the crucial points of chronology as 
determined by the monuments of ancient Egypt. 

Franz Unger, an Austrian botanist and scien- 
tist, who spent some time in Egypt and produced 
several monographs on the prehistoric and ancient 
flora of the land, has taken the history of wheat 
and other cereals in Egypt back to a very remote 
date. Unger remarks that in tombs of great an- 
tiquity he has discovered seventeen distinct va- 
rieties of plants, all so well preserved that in each 
case the exact species could be determined. His 
researches led him to the conclusion that wheat, 
though not indigenous in Egypt, was grown there 
in prehistoric times. In some bricks from the 
walls of Eilethyia he found straw which he was in- 
clined to identify as wheat straw, though on this 
point some doubt exists. Later he discovered a 
grain of wheat in a brick from the pyramid of 
Dashur ; the date of this monument he placed at 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 37 

thirty-three hundred b. c. Remarkably enough 
this grain bore a strong resemblance to the small- 
grained wheat discovered in the piles of the lake 
huts of the aboriginal Swiss, to which reference 
has already been made. The importance of this 
discovery, always assuming the correctness of the 
age attributed to this monument, need not be em- 
phasized. In Unger's opinion, the ancient Egyp- 
tians cultivated many kinds of wheat besides the 
variety discovered. A bearded spring wheat and 
a winter wheat without beard are described by 
Theophrastus, and in ancient tombs several speci- 
mens, more or less well preserved, have been 
found. Unger says that the wheat commonly 
grown in Egypt was that known to botanists 
as triticum turgidum, and that this variety was 
also known to the ancient Egyptians, being fig- 
ured on their monuments and found in graves 
of great antiquity. But antiquity is a term of 
relative meaning, and an ancient monument in 
Egypt may carry us back three thousand years or 
it may carry us back ten thousand years. 

In the comparatively modern days of Herodo- 
tus the Egyptians were evidently great bread-eat- 
ers, as he twice refers to this food. In one pas- 
sage he says : " Other nations feed on wheat and 
barley, but the Egyptians hold this food in the 
greatest contempt and feed on spelt which some 
call zea. Dough they knead with their feet, but 
clay with their hands." Elsewhere he says : "The 
Egyptians eat bread which they make from spelt 
and call kullestis." This is a typical instance of 
the inaccuracy of Herodotus. There is no reason to 
believe that the Egyptians despised either wheat 
or barley. On the contrary, both these grains as 
well as sorghum (durra) are pictured in votive 



38 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

offerings to the gods. Moreover, although the 
Greek word ohira is usually taken to mean spelt, 
it is probable that Herodotus mistook for spelt 
triticum monococcam, which is no longer grown in 
Egypt. The loaves he speaks of were baked with 
leaven and were usually circular and flat in shape 
like crumpets or muffins. In some cases Egyp- 
tian bread was shaped like modern rolls and 
sprinkled on the top with seeds very much after 
the style of some Vienna rolls of to-day. Sir 
Gardner Wilkinson, in his Manners and Customs 
of Ancient Egyptians, tells us that in ancient 
Egypt the rich lived on white bread, while the 
poor were content with loaves of barley and durra. 
The same is probably true to-day, especially in 
regard to durra. Barley was extensively grown 
in ancient Egypt and its culture may have pre- 
ceded that of wheat. Besides serving the poorer 
classes for bread, barley was used in ancient (as 
in modern) Egypt for making a kind of beer lo- 
cally known as Booza, which word is said to have 
been brought by gipsies to Shakespeare's Eng- 
land, and to have been corrupted into the vulgar 
English " booze." The brewing of this beer was 
practised in Egypt as far back as the time of 
Herodotus. 

Sir Gardner Wilkinson has given some inter- 
esting notes on the agriculture of ancient Egypt, 
which does not seem to have materially differed 
from that practised at the present time. The 
plough of the fellah to-day is much the same as 
that used by his predecessor three thousand or 
four thousand years before. Sir Gardner says 
that the system of thrashing used in ancient Egypt 
was practically identical with that of the present 
day. In these days when wheat or barley or 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 39 

durra have been gathered, the grain is bound up 
into sheaves and carried to a level and cleanly 
swept area near the field ; after the grain has 
been spread about the ground it is thrashed by a 
machine known as the norag w 7 hich is drawn by 
two oxen. This norag consists of a wooden 
frame with three cross bars or axles in which 
are fixed circular iron plates to bruise the ears 
of corn and extract the grain, while the straw 
is cut up into small pieces. A similar method 
was followed by the ancient Egyptians, the only 
difference being this, that while in modern Egypt 
the oxen go around the heap of grain which 
is in the centre, in old days they traversed the 
wheat spread in a kind of circle around the 
floor. Reaping was evidently a favourite sub- 
ject of ancient Egyptian artists, and several rep- 
resentations of the cutting of both wheat and bar- 
ley are given by Unger ; one figure representing 
the cutting of barley is reproduced from a very 
ancient tomb at Gizeh. The reapers are using 
sickles shaped much like those of the present day, 
and it may be noted that they cut the grain at 
various points : close to the head, in the centre, 
and more rarely near the ground. 

It has frequently been asserted that wheat 
found in ancient Egyptian tombs has been sown 
and has fructified. There seems no foundation 
for this statement. It is to be feared that Sir 
Gardner Wilkinson unwittingly lent his name to 
the propaganda of this now discredited legend. In 
his great work, Sir Gardner remarks that in the 
sepulchres of Thebes grains of corn (wheat) and 
other seeds, have been found entire and preserved 
as if fresh from the soil. This is no doubt quite 
true : the soil of Egypt is exceedingly dry, and 



40 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 



preserves organic matter from chemical changes 
in a manner which dwellers in damper climates 
find it difficult to realize. Moreover, these grains 
and seeds were preserved in pits hewn in the rock 
and sunk to depths ranging from fifteen to 
seventy feet. It is well known that at certain 
depths grain will not germinate, and it is easy to 
perceive that grain preserved under such condi- 
tions might retain its original shape intact, and 
show no traces of sprouting. Sir Gardner 
goes further than this and expresses the belief 
that wheat found in such tombs would sprout if 
sown under suitable conditions, though he did not 
claim to have personally verified any such case. 
As a matter of fact, no case of mummy wheat 
germinating has ever been established. On the 
contrary, Unger, who took home several well-pre- 
served specimens of wheat and barley from an- 
cient tombs, had no success in his carefully con- 
ducted experiments. Many other Egyptologists 
have tested the germinative power of w T heat found 
in tombs of undoubted antiquity, but always with 
negative results. The only successful experiment 
of this kind, that made by an Austrian nobleman, 
Count Sternberg, is open to grave doubt. The 
count's good faith is beyond question, but the 
grains of wheat he sowed on his estate in Bo- 
hemia, a few of which did actually sprout, w r ere 
not found by him, but were given him by a friend 
who had brought them from Egypt, and w T ho be- 
lieved that they came from a mummy's sarco- 
phagus. 

Assuming this to be the case, there is no proof 
that they were placed there in the days of the 
Pharaohs. It is notorious that the class of Arabs 
who guide travellers to the tombs and hunt up an- 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 41 

tiquities for them, are more eager for business 
than scrupulous in obtaining it. The legend of 
mummy wheat has had no more strenuous propa- 
gators than these people. One European traveller 
was taken to an ancient tomb, where a newly 
broken sarcophagus was triumphantly shown him 
inside of which lay some handfuls of maize. As 
this cereal was unknown in Egypt until recent 
times, its presence in this case sufficiently ex- 
plains how mummy wheat has been found which 
will germinate. Judging by the experiments of 
competent and unbiased scientists it may be 
taken for granted that wheat grains, however 
carefully preserved, lose their germinative power 
in the course of a few years ; a term of four years 
has been given as a maximum by some experiment- 
ers, but this is admittedly hypothetical. 

Transplanted to America, the germinated mum- 
my-wheat legend has grown to marvellous propor- 
tions through the agency of the daily newspapers, 
those fruitful sources of popular misinformation. 
The idea of growing wheat from seed found in 
Egyptian ruins evidently appeals with much force 
to the imaginations of those whose duty and pleas- 
ure it is to prepare the choice literature which ap- 
pears in the American Sunday newspapers. At ir- 
regular intervals, therefore, the wonderful tale of 
wheat grown from ancient seed is printed in these 
journals with such an amount of exact detail and 
corroborative incident as to make it seem exceed- 
ingly plausible. Usually the scene of the strange 
development is laid in some remote and seldom- 
heard-of village not easily reached by the searcher 
after truth if he were inclined to trace newspaper 
sensations to their origin in fact. Full names of 
all persons concerned are given and much circum- 



42 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

stantial evidence is adduced with no sparing use 
of pseudo-scientific terms to give the whole an 
appearance of the exact truth. Doubtless the 
writers mightily enjoy the preparation of these 
fanciful occurrences, and many of them embellish 
their tales with further particulars, adding as 
much as they dare to the wonderful fact itself by 
relating to what remarkable height the wheat 
grew and what curious grains it bore. It is quite 
probable that many readers of this perennial hoax 
take it in sober earnest and are greatly impressed 
thereby. 

Recently the author of one of these ancient seed 
fables overshot the mark inadvertently by failing 
to learn the meaning of the word corn. In Amer- 
ica corn is understood as maize ; elsewhere it 
means grain of any sort. The Chicago newspaper 
writer had read of the mummy-seed legend, but 
the word " corn " was used therein instead of 
wheat. He naturally concluded that the ancient 
seed was identical with Indian corn, and, not 
knowing that maize is of American origin and 
was introduced into the old world after the dis- 
covery of the new, he wrote a most marvellous 
story based upon his error. In a Pennsylvania 
town a reverend gentleman retired from the min- 
istry had received a package of grain from a friend 
who had recently returned from a visit to Egypt. 
This grain had been found in a sealed package in 
"Egyptian ruins known to have been covered a 
thousand years before the birth of Christ." The 
reverend person planted the seed in his garden, 
and truly astounding was the crop ! Corn-stalks 
fourteen feet high, with ears nearly two feet long, 
and grains blood red in colour came up. Further, 
singular worms developed on the stalks, having 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 43 

the appearance of " diminutive horned devils." 
These, if removed to other " corn " of the ordi- 
nary sort, either died or " managed to get back in 
some way to the Egyptian stalks, where they can 
alone secure sustenance." Such, with many em- 
bellishments, is the latest development of the 
mummy-wheat legend under favourable condi- 
tions, given to the public through the medium of 
the daily newspaper, in the form of a special tele- 
gram from the scene of the marvellous occur- 
rence, with headlines almost as tall as the miracu- 
lous stalks so accurately and truthfully described 
in the context. 

Biblical references to " corn " are plentiful and 
familiar, and wheat is specifically mentioned in 
many places in the Scripture. In Samuel xii, 17 : 
" Is it not wheat harvest to-day?" From Job 
xxxi, 40 : " Let thistles grow instead of wheat and 
cockle instead of barley." Verse sixteen of the 
eighty-first Psalm contains this reference : " He 
should have fed them also with the finest of the 
wheat." Psalm cxlvii, verse fourteen, contains 
the following: " He maketh peace in thy borders 
and filleth thee with the finest of the wheat." 
Twice in Jeremiah is wheat spoken of: '"They 
have sown wheat, but shall reap thorns " (Jer. xii, 
13); "What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the 
Lord " (Jer. xxiii, 28). In the New Testament the 
word wheat is often used. In Matthew there is a 
reference to the thrashing process of the time: 
"Whose fan is in his hand and he will thoroughly 
purge his floor and gather his wheat into the gar- 
ner " (Matt, iii, 12). Again, in Matthew xiii, 25 : 
"But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed 
tares among the wheat and went his way." In 
Luke xxii, 31 : "And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, 



44 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 



behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he 
may sift you as wheat." In John xii, 24: " Veri- 
ly, verily I say unto you, except a corn of wheat 
fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone ; 
but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." In 
Acts xxvii, 38 : "And when they had eaten enough 
they lightened the ship, and cast out the wheat 
into the sea." 

Finally, wheat is honoured above all other 
cereals by being used to elucidate and explain the 
Resurrection in the fifteenth chapter of I Corin- 
thians : "And that which thou sowest, thou sowest 
not that body that shall be, but bare grain it may 
chance of wheat or some other grain." " So also 
is the resurrection of the dead." "It is sown a 
natural body; it is raised a spiritual body." 

From the very cradle of the human race wheat 
has taken its beginning. Its origin antedates all 
known languages, and it is older than the oldest 
civilization. Its history is contemporaneous with 
that of the recipient of its benefits, and it will 
doubtless abide with mankind until he no longer 
tenants the earth. 



CHAPTER IV 

Wheat in modern times — The United Kingdom's supplies 
and requirements — Wheat in France, Germany, Rus- 
sia, and other European countries — The world's 
wheat crop — India as a wheat producer 



To relate in detail the history of wheat grow- 
ing in the various countries of Europe would be 
a long story and full of repetition. Spreading 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 



45 



with the growth of civilization, wherever man 
emerged from barbarism, wheat followed in his 
footsteps and rewarded his crude labour with its 
more or less bountiful harvest. As knowledge 
grew and agricultural methods improved, wheat 
came into greater use as the favoured of cereals, 
and as the ingenuity of man found better methods 
of grinding, the wonderful berry responded by 




A Budapesth Elevator. 

giving up more and more of its secrets. In an- 
other chapter the development of milling proc- 
esses will be described, and the achievements of 
modern machinery in treating wheat will be re- 
lated, but throughout all this progress the wheat 



46 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

berry from the beginning has held within itself 
the essential qualities necessary for an ideal food, 
and has given them up only in return for intelli- 
gent and scientific experiment. It has been the 
benignant sphinx of the ages, offering fruitful 
reward for continued effort. 

Speaking of wheat in Europe in modern times, 
a review of its production during the past three 
decades shows less extraordinary changes prob- 
ably than many would expect ; some of these 
changes are, however, very remarkable. For 
instance, thirty years ago the United Kingdom 
produced 120 million bushels of home-grown 
wheat, and imported only 64 million bushels; 
in 1901 the home production was only 55 million 
bushels, and the imports of wheat and flour were 
186 million bushels, the area under wheat having 
decreased from 3,760,000 acres in 1870 to 1,740,- 
000 acres in 1901. 

Spain is another country which has undergone 
a complete change in this respect. Thirty years 
ago Spanish wheat was exported in quite impor- 
tant quantities, especially to England. To-day 
Spain is an importer of foreign wheat, usually 
requiring about 8 million bushels annually. 
Most of the other countries, however, have in- 
creased their growth of wheat, although by no 
means in the ratio that has been required by the 
increase in the population, and the consequent 
greater number of bread-eaters. Russia is, per- 
haps, the only exception. 

The competition of American wheat, especially 
in the last ten years, and of Argentina wheat 
within the last seven years, has effectually killed 
wheat growing in England except for the sake of 
the straw. The thin edge of the wedge of pro- 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 



47 



tection is believed by many to have been placed 
in position recently by the reimposition of the 
registration fee of $d. per hundredweight, but it 
may be regarded as very doubtful whether Eng- 
land will ever return to the principle of protection 
pure and simple ; indeed, it is quite probable that 
one of the first acts of the Liberal Government, 
should it return to power, would be to abolish this 
tax, which, it cannot be disguised, is obnoxious to 
the masses. 

Thirty years ago Russia was England's chief 
source of supply. The changes which have taken 
place in this respect are shown in the following 
comparison of the imports into the United King- 
dom in the year 1872 and in 1900 : 





1872. 


1900. 


Russia 


Quarters. 
4,168,000 
2,030,000 
910,000 
660,000 
536,000 
400,000 
None. 
130,000 
685,000 


Quarters. 

1,031,000 

13,561,000 

439,000 

252,000 

None. 


United States 


Germany 


France 


EfTVDt 


^blt"- 

Canada 


1,877,000 

4,322,000 

None. 


Argentina 


Spain 


Others 


1,708,000 




Total 


9,519,000 


23,190,000 





France in 1872 exported a large quantity of 
flour without the aid of any bounty system. Since 
then the stress of foreign competition has led the 
Government, in deference to the demands of the 
agriculturists, to gradually raise the import duty 
from a nominal fee to a prohibitory tax of $2.92 
per 480 pounds. The result of this tax (which is 



48 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

temporarily suspended when the harvest fails, as 
in 1897), has not been to increase the area under 
wheat, which has remained for many years at 
about seventeen million acres, but better farming 
methods, improved seed wheat, and an increased 
use of artificial manures, have combined to raise 
the average yield per acre from 15 bushels to 20 
bushels. The result is that, with an ordinary good 
yield, France now produces more wheat than she 
needs to feed the home population ; and prices 
have been very depressed in recent years, being 
sometimes very little above the level in England, 
in spite of the duty. Various measures have 
been suggested to the French Government for 
the raising of prices to a more remunerative 
level, but for the most part they have not been 
practical, and the scheme adopted — that of giving 
a rebate of the duty on wheat if an equal quan- 
tity of flour and offal be exported — has led to 
no improvement. In course of "time, therefore, it 
may be expected that French farmers will turn 
their attention to other and more profitable prod- 
ucts. 

Germany is another country which has thought 
fit to protect its farmers from the wholesale com- 
petition of foreign wheat. In Germany the min- 
imum duty is about $1.80 per 480 pounds, and the 
result has been to somewhat increase the home 
production, which in good years now reaches 150 
million bushels, or 50 per cent more than the 
production a quarter of a century ago. The home 
consumption has, however, increased to a far 
greater extent, and now amounts to about 200 
million bushels. Germany is, however, a rye- 
eating country; the ordinary rye production be- 
ing 320 million bushels and the consumption 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 49 

about 350 million bushels. Since 1891 the con- 
sumption of wheat per capita has, however, in- 
creased somewhat, for the following reasons. In 
1891 there was a disastrous failure of the Russian 
rye crop, and also a partial failure of the German 
crop. This caused the German Government to 
use more wheaten flour in the bread supplied to 
the army, with the result that there is now a 
more general demand for wheaten flour than for- 
merly. 

It should be explained that Germany is usually 
both an exporting and an importing country in re- 
gard to wheat. The customs laws permit an equal 
quantity of foreign wheat to be imported duty 
free to the home-grown wheat exported. Much 
of the wheat grown in Germany is a soft variety, 
which finds a sale in Scandinavia and England, as 
much as 12 million bushels being sometimes ex- 
ported in a single year, but Germany always re- 
quires 32 million bushels of foreign wheat to sup- 
plement the home production. The year 1901 was 
an exceptional one in this respect, for the failure 
of the crop led to an importation of a net quan- 
tity of 80 million bushels, which established a 
record. 

The change in Germany's wheat production is 
shown by the following comparison : 

1879. Crop 105,000,000 bushels. 

Net imports 2,000,000 " 

Total 107,000,000 " 

1900. Crop 152,000,000 *' 

Net imports. 48,000,000 *' 

Total 200,000,000 " 

4 



50 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

Similar figures for France give the following 
result : 

1872. Crop 332,000,000 bushels. 

Net imports 4,000,000 " 

Total 336,000,000 " 

1900. Crop 325,000,000 " 

Net imports 5,000,000 " 

Total 330,000,000 " 

France, therefore, is at a standstill, so to speak, 
in regard to her wheat trade, although, as already 
explained, the farming methods have improved, 
and given a good crop (that of 1900 was a rela- 
tively poor one) the production would exceed the 
home demand. 

Russia is the country in w 7 hich the most re- 
markable changes have been made, thanks to the 
competition of American wheat. In the five years 
from 1877 to 1881 the average wheat production 
was 210 million bushels, and the average yearly 
exports 50 million bushels. For the four years 
from 1893 to 1896 the officially recorded produc- 
tion averaged 425 million bushels per annum, and 
the exports 120 million bushels per annum. For 
the four years from 1898 to 1901 inclusive the 
average production, according to the official 
statements, has been 440 million bushels, but the 
average yearly exports during this period have 
been only 72 million bushels. It is quite clear 
that if an average crop of 425 million bushels in 
the four years ended 1896 yielded a surplus of 120 
million bushels per annum, an average crop of 440 
million bushels in recent years should have re- 
sulted in a still greater surplus ; whereas, as we see, 
the actual exports were 48 million bushels per an- 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 51 

num less. Thus it is that much discredit attaches to 
the received official estimates in Russia, the com- 
mercial estimates of the crops for the last four 
years not exceeding 390 million bushels per an- 
num. It is a fact, however, that great economic 
changes have taken place in Russia within the 
past twenty years. Manufactures have largely 
increased, and the population likewise, w T ith the 
result that wheaten flour is consumed to a larger 
extent than ever before. It is perhaps natural 
that in an agricultural country like Russia the 
greatest efforts to combat the American competi- 
tion should have been made. Large as has been 
the increase in Russian wheat production, it still 
falls behind the progress made in the United 
States, even if we accept the Russian official esti- 
mates of the crops, which, as already said, are 
open to much doubt. The comparative progress 
made by the two countries may best be shown as 
follows : 

Russia 

Bushels. 

Average wheat crop five years, 1877 to 1881 210,000,000 

Four years, 1S97 to 1900 440,000,000 

Increase 230,000,000 

United States 

Bushels. 

Average crop five years, 1877 to 188 1 430,000,000 

Four years, 1897 to 1900 675,000,000 

Increase 245,000,000 

It was the fashion among certain authorities 
in Europe twelve years ago to believe that the 
increase in the population in America would soon 
outrun the increase in wheat production. This 
was at a time when the average yearly exports 



52 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

of wheat and flour from the United States were 
only no million bushels. In 1901, however, the 
record quantity of 235 million bushels was export- 
ed from the United States, and now, instead of 
attempting to foretell the period when America 
will become an importer of wheat, the British 
are asking themselves whether the United States 
is not overdoing the business of wheat produc- 
tion. 

To return to Russia. It may not be generally 
known that this country is fully up to America, 
France, and England in the dissemination of offi- 
cial accounts relating to crops, stocks, and prices. 
Every week there is published in St. Petersburg 
what is called the Messenger of Finance, an offi- 
cial organ which gives a weekly record of com- 
mercial and agricultural matters. Not only are 
all the local markets reported, but voluminous re- 
ports of foreign market movements are also given. 
Unfortunately, the paper is printed in the Russian 
language, which limits the number of readers out- 
side Russia. 

Russia has for some years been making every 
effort to improve its agriculture. Some ten years 
ago the Government assisted in the erection of 
grain elevators on the American plan, along the 
lines of the Southern Railway, as well as at Odessa 
and other southern ports. So far, no attempt at 
grading and inspecting the wheat has been suc- 
cessful. Most Russian wheat is sold on sample 
for Great Britain, and complaints have been very 
frequent of late years of the fraudulent admixture 
of cockle and screenings with the wheat destined 
for shipment. Endeavours have been made with- 
out success, so far, to get Russian wheat sold on 
a 5 per cent extraneous matter basis ; but as 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 53 

Roumania has recently adopted this method, it is 
not unlikely that Russia will soon follow. 

There is another point in connection with the 
Russian wheat trade which is worth noting. For 
some years a system of state aid, in the shape of 
loans from the state bank on wheat in store on 
the railways (which are state property) has been 
in vogue, the idea being to enable farmers to hold 
their wheat whenever they desire to do so. In 
i888-'89 Russia's exports overtopped those of the 
United States, being in that season no million 
bushels as compared with 90 million bushels. 
Since then, however, Russia has fallen behind 
considerably, the returns for 1901 showing only 
82 million bushels exported from that country, 
compared with 235 million bushels from the 
United States. 

With regard to the future of wheat-growing in 
Russia, much is possible. At present, the system 
of farming is to a great extent primitive. There 
are about 42 million acres under wheat and the 
average yield per acre is not more than ten and 
one-half bushels. By the use of artificial manure 
Russia could probably add fifty per cent to its 
production of wheat, in which case she would 
easily resume her ancient place as the " Granary 
of Europe." With the exception of India, Russia 
obtains the lowest yield per acre from her wheat- 
fields. The comparison of the average yields for 
the various principal countries is as follows : 

India 10 bushels per acre. 

Russia 10J 

Roumania 17 

Hungary 17 

France 20 

Germany 27 

England 30 



54 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 



Roumania has made little progress as a wheat 
producer during the last quarter of a century. 
Seventy million bushels is a maximum crop, and 
this was reached in 1901. Maize is the chief 
product of the country, this crop having reached 
123 million bushels in 1901. 

Perhaps a clear method of showing the progress 
of wheat production in Europe in the last twenty 
years will be to give the yield as officially returned 
in each of the principal countries in 1880, 1890, and 
1900. This is given in the following statement: 

European Wheat Production 





1900. 


1890. 


1880. 


France, 


Quarters.* 
40,650,000 
53,000,000 
19,500,000 
6,800,000 
6,750,000 
24,100,000 
14,500,000 
24,750,000 


Quarters.* 
41,120,000 
35,000,000 
13,000,000 
9,500,000 
6,500,000 
24,150,000 
16,000,000 
24,000,000 


Quarters! * 
35,000,000 
25,000,000 
1 1, 000,000 
9,500,000 
4,500,000 
21,000,000 
13,000,000 
20,000,000 


Russia 


Germany 

United Kingdom.. 

Roumania 

Austria- Hungary . . 

Italy 

Others 




Total 


190,050,000 


169,270,000 


139,000,000 



From the above it will be seen that all the 
countries named have gained in the production of 
wheat since 1880 except the United Kingdom, 
which shows a loss of nearly 30 per cent compared 
with the returns for both of the previous decades. 

In the next tabulated statement is given the 
production in each country for the six years end- 
ing 1901, and the present estimated consumption 
for each country : 



* A quarter of wheat = 8 bushels, or 480 pounds. 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 



55 



The European Wheat Crop 
(In quarters of 480 pounds, 000 omitted) 



Estimated 
consump- 



S Austria 

2 -^ 000 i Hungary 

6,500 Belgium 

2,750 Bulgaria 

750 Denmark 

43,250 France 

24,000 Germany 

1,500 Greece 

2,750 Holland 

20,000 Italy 

750 Portugal 

4,000 Roumania 

\ Russia 

4°' 000 l Caucasus 

1,000 Servia 

13,000 Spain 

1,250 Sweden 

2,500 Switzerland 

6,000 Turkey (Europe) . 
30,750 United Kingdom. 

223,750 Total for Europ 



1901. 


1900. 
Qrs. 


1899. 


1898. 


1897. 


Qrs. 


Qrs. 


Qrs. 


Qrs. 


5,5oo 


5,100 


6,200 


5,800 


4,300 


i7i 2 5° 


19,000 


18,750 


i7i5oo 


12,000 


1,500 


1,500 


1,500 


i,750 


2,000 


4,000 


3,000 


3i5oo 


5,000 


4,000 


250 


325 


5°o 


500 


500 


38,000 


40,650 


45,75o 


45,5oo 


30,000 


12,000 


19,500 


19,700 


18,800 


14,500 


650 


75o 


75o 


75o 


650 


650 


5°o 


650 


600 


650 


16,000 


14,500 


16,750 


16,500 


10,000 


600 


500 


500 


75o 


850 


8,750 


6,750 


3,250 


7,000 


4,5oo 


43,000 


41,000 


43,000 


44,000 


38,500 


7,000 


6,000 


6,500 


6,000 


3,75o 


1,250 


1,000 


1,650 


1,500 


1,650 


14,000 


12,250 


11,900 


15,000 


12,500 


500 


500 


500 


55o 


500 


500 


500 


500 


500 


500 


5,000 


4,000 


3,000 


3,5oo 


3,500 


7,000 


6,800 


8,250 


10,000 


7,000 


183,400 


185,125 


193,100 


201,500 


151,850 



1896. 

Qrs. 



5,200 

17,500 

2,000 

6,250 

500 

43,000 

14,800 

75o 

75o 

171 500 

500 

8,625 

45,5oo 

5,75o 

1,250 

10,000 

500 

600 

5,ooo 

7,250 



In order to complete the showing it may be 
well to give the corrected returns for the whole 
world's wheat production in the same years, divid- 
ing the European from the non-European. This 
is shown in the following statement, the figures 
being quarters of 480 pounds, 000 being omitted : 



The World' 


s Wheat Crop 








1901. 


1900. 


1899. 


1898. 


1897. 


1896. 


1800. 


European 


183,400 
167,500 


185,125 
139,000 


193,100 
156,100 


201,500 
168,800 


151,850 
139,800 


193,225 
114,450 


139,000 
119,000 


Non-European 


Total 


350,900 


324,125 


349,200 


370,300 


291,650 


307,675 


258,000 



The present ordinary consumption of wheat in 
the world is 340 million quarters. Last year it 



56 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 



probably exceeded 350 million quarters because 
of the extraordinary scarcity of maize, and the 
consequent increased requirements of wheat in 
America. 



Indian 


Wheat Crop and 


Exports 




Crop. 


Exports. 


1901 


Quarters. 
31,500,000 
23,000,000 
29,500,000 
31,000,000 
24,000,000 
25,600,000 
32,000,000 
31,500,000 
33,500,000 
26,000,000 
32,250,000 
28,750,000 
30,000,000 
33,000,000 
29,750,000 
36,000,000 
35,750,000 


Quarters. 
1,750,000 
I0,000 
2,200,000 


1900 


i8qq 


1898 


4,500,000 
550,000 
450,000 

2,300,000 


1807 


1896 


1805 


1804 


I,600,000 


1803 


2,800,000 


l8Q2 


3,500,000 
7,050,000 
3,300,000 


1891 


1890 


1880 


3,200,000 
4,100,000 


1888 


1887 


3,100,000 


1886 


5,200,000 
4,900,000 


1885 





India first commenced shipping wheat in any 
quantity in 1880, when the exports reached 500,- 
000 quarters. After that there was a gradual in- 
crease until 1891, the year of the Russian famine, 
when high prices drew no less than 7,000,000 
quarters from India. Since 1891 the movement 
has gradually decreased, and in 1896 the failure 
of the crop led to an importation of 150,000 
quarters of foreign wheat, a circumstance hitherto 
unheard of. The decline in the price of silver and 
the fall in the exchange value of the rupee 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 57 

assisted the export movement, but India's wheat 
history shows that the crop is a precarious one, 
depending to a very great extent upon the mon- 
soon rains. Perhaps the best guide to a knowl- 
edge of the Indian wheat trade is a record of the 
crops and exports since 1885, which is given on 
the preceding page. 

It is very doubtful whether the returns for 
former years were as correct as those of the later 
years. It is probable that the crops in the 
eighties were overestimated. Certain it is, how- 
ever, that the home consumption of wheat in 
India is increasing, partly owing to the increase 
in the white population, and partly to the spread 
of western customs in the matter of foods. 



CHAPTER V 

Britain the great wheat mart — Russian wheat — The 
great famine — Hunger- bread — Communal farming — 
The "Mir" — Siberian wheat 

In its international character as the world's 
food provider, wheat comes to a final reckoning 
in the markets of Great Britain. Before that 
point of observation, the world's wheat crops pass 
in review. It is the great clearing-house in which 
the balances of the wheat-growing countries are 
adjusted. Britain's own enormous needs, her free 
markets, open, until recently, without even a nom- 
inal tax to the wheat and flour of other nations, 
her ability to buy and pay for the world's offer- 
ings, place her in the eminent position of the 
nation which makes the wheat price for the rest 



58 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

of the world. Britain asks the wheat-raisers an- 
nually, " How much of your crop do you require 
for your own use and how much have you to 
sell ? " Other countries are importers of wheat, 
some of them require large quantities regularly, 
some of them are intermittent bidders for a por- 
tion of the world's crop, but the United Kingdom 
is a steady and regular purchaser of wheat and 
its products ; a country of wheat-bread eaters, 
raising always much less than she consumes, and 
with characteristic resourcefulness ready at a 
moment's notice to pay in good red gold for what 
she needs. The wheat-producers elsewhere who 
have a surplus to sell compete for her orders, 
and while she is a close buyer, getting her food 
supply at the lowest figure, she is a most desirable 
customer, by reason of her prompt pay and her 
fairness in dealing. The only bar to her steady 
advancement of power and influence in this direc- 
tion is the tax recently levied upon flour and 
wheat. If this is merely a temporary expedient 
for the purpose of raising revenue it will have no 
permanent effect upon her position ; if, however, 
it be the entering wedge for a return to a protect- 
ive policy, it may mark the beginning of a new 
era of higher priced bread for her people, and at 
the same time a decline in the position she has so 
long and so proudly occupied in the world's wheat 
markets. Be this as it may, at present the United 
Kingdom holds the key which unlocks the treas- 
ury from which comes the pay of the man who 
grows wheat the world over. 

This being true, the international importance 
of the wheat-producing countries is measured by 
British standards. It would be of little conse- 
quence to the outside world if Russia raised an 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 59 

enormous crop of wheat, and consumed it all 
within her own borders. The amount she ships 
to Britain, however, affects many nations — the 
United States, Canada, Argentina, and other 
wheat-exporting countries. If the consumption 
of wheat in the United States equalled the amount 
raised in that country, it would cease to be 
considered as a factor in the world's markets. 
In the end Britain practically settles the wheat 
question so far as exporting countries are con- 
cerned ; and her requirements are the great factor 
in determining whether or not a crop is to pay the 
grower. 

In the tables shown in the preceding chapter, 
which should be carefully considered in order to 
understand the world's wheat situation, it appears 
that, among European countries, Russia is fore- 
most in supplying Britain's needs. Thirty years 
ago Russia was her chief source of supply, but 
the United States has quite distanced her in the 
race; Argentina and Canada have also passed 
her. Later the possibilities of the two latter coun- 
tries will be considered, but before turning to the 
western world it will be well to glance at the 
prospects of European countries becoming im- 
portant competitors with it for the wheat orders 
of the United Kingdom. 

Germany with an enormous population is both 
an exporter and importer of wheat, but she will 
probably have nothing greater to contribute to the 
international market than the quantity she has al- 
ready offered. France will do well to raise enough 
for her own needs. Russia alone has possibilities 
in this direction. As in other things, this vast 
country is very much of an enigma, what she 
might do in the way of wheat production under 



60 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

favourable circumstances and what she probably 
will do, handicapped as she is by conditions 
which are an inherited and constituent part of 
her agricultural system, are two very different 
things. Possessed of an enormous area of fertile 
land capable, under proper cultivation, of produc- 
ing immense quantities of wheat, and geograph- 
ically situated within easy access to the European 
markets, Russia would be a formidable competi- 
tor, if it were possible for her to overcome the 
inertia of an ignorant, improvident, and conserva- 
tive peasantry, which clings to methods of wheat- 
growing which are but a slight advance over 
those in use during the Middle Ages. The acre- 
age is there, the fertility of the soil is great, the 
farming population is sufficiently large and cer- 
tainly industrious in its way, but the system is 
faulty and the implements primitive. So little do 
the peasants understand farming as it is under- 
stood in the western hemisphere, that, in a land 
capable of producing enormous crops, sufficient 
not alone for home needs, but also to provide a 
surplus for shipment abroad, famines are of fre- 
quent occurrence. 

The great Russian famine of i89i- , 92, which 
was unparalleled both for severity and extent, 
was the result of crop failures, affecting more or 
less eighteen governments, extending from Perm 
in the northeast to Orel in the central west, and 
comprising some of the best and most productive 
districts of the empire. These provinces were on 
both sides of the Volga, and extended westward 
nearly half-way across Russia, and had at that 
time a population of about thirty-six millions. 
While the crop failures were due in a measure to 
unfavourable weather, the crude agricultural meth- 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 6 1 

ods of the peasants were even more responsible 
for the dreadful situation which prevailed. This 
was conclusively shown by the existence of a few 
oases in the desert of barrenness, consisting of 
estates cultivated by intelligent and progressive 
landowners, who raised grain by modern methods, 
using machinery of the latest pattern ; on these 
fair crops were produced in spite of the unfavour- 
able weather. 

This famine began in June, i89i,and rumours 
of the alarming situation in the interior came to 
St. Petersburg early in the season, but owing to 
the remoteness of the capital from the scene of 
suffering, and the lack of news facilities, the re- 
ports were easily discredited by certain Govern- 
ment officials then in power who stubbornly re- 
fused to admit that anything was wrong. It was 
some time before the authorities awoke to the 
actual situation, and by this time considerable 
quantities of wheat had been exported from the 
country by the astute grain handlers and wheat 
speculators, who were well informed as to condi- 
tions in the interior and anxious to possess the 
grain before the truth was generally known. The 
seaports of the empire were very active during the 
earlier part of the season, but an imperial ukase 
forbidding the export of grain put a tardy end to 
these transactions, and retained at home some 
part of the scanty crop. 

Late in awakening to the situation, the Gov- 
ernment at once acted with autocratic power and 
energy towards the amelioration of the peasants' 
deplorable condition, but the area affected by the 
famine was so vast, the number of famine-stricken 
so great, and the railway communications so in- 
adequate, that, although every possible effort was 



62 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

made to afford relief, the hardships endured by 
the peasantry during the autumn, winter, and 
spring were heart-rending. Many literally starved 
to death, more died from the effects of fevers 
brought on by lack of proper food, and the mor- 
tality among the children and old people was 
frightful. Russia was stunned by the overwhelm- 
ing spread of hunger, disease, and death within 
her borders, and civilization was shocked to find 
that in the nineteenth century a famine rivalling 
in its horrors any of those mentioned in mediaeval 
history could occur, especially in a land renowned 
for the fertility of its soil. The unfortunate peas- 
antry was reduced to a state of helpless and hope- 
less dejection. Cows and horses were disposed of 
at a nominal price in order to obtain the means of 
prolonging life. In some instances horses were 
sold for three roubles ($1.50) or were even killed 
in order that they might not die of starvation. 
" Hunger-bread," a horrible compound made from 
the lebeda weed, mixed with a small portion of 




" Hunger-Bread." 



rye and chopped straw, bark or even sand, was 
the common substitute for food in the worst dis- 
tricts. The use of this noxious mixture caused 
disorders of the stomach which frequently result- 
ed in death. Scurvy, typhus, and small-pox fol- 
lowed in the wake of the famine. 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 63 

It was found necessary to supply more or less 
relief to some twenty million people who were 
destitute and helpless. Systematic aid was fur- 
nished from October to August. It was estimated 
that the amount expended in relieving the dis- 
tress during this period was not less than $200,- 
000,000, while the total direct and indirect loss 
to the empire by reason of the calamity was be- 
yond calculation. Other countries came to the 
assistance of Russia in her great battle with the 
army of hunger, the United States leading the list 
of contributors. The American millers sent a 
shipload of flour, collected by the agency of the 
Northwestern Miller, and carried on the steamship 
Missouri to the relief of the hungry peasants. 
The city of Philadelphia was conspicuous in send- 
ing supplies, and large sums of money were col- 
lected in America and despatched to the United 
States minister at St. Petersburg for private dis- 
tribution. England also assisted in the relief 
work. In fact, almost every civilized country 
did something to aid in saving the unfortunate 
peasants from starvation. The efforts made by 
the Russian Government, officially and by indi- 
viduals, from the emperor himself to his most 
humble subject, to relieve the distress prevailing 
in the famine-stricken districts, were very great, 
but in spite of all, the peasantry in the affected 
provinces endured horrors which no pen can fully 
describe. The famine and its after-effects left 
Russia in an exhausted condition, so far as wheat- 
growing was concerned. Bereft of seed wheat to 
a large degree, with horses or cows scarce or in 
bad condition, and peasant farmers weak and 
more than usually dispirited, it was plain that the 
great and fertile empire would be obliged to hus- 



64 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

band its resources of grain for some years, and 
that it would take many seasons of plenty to re- 
fill her empty store-houses and place her in a 
position where she could again have something to 
export. The years immediately succeeding the 
famine were not particularly favourable for grain- 
growers, and it is doubtful if Russia has yet en- 
tirely recovered from its effects. 

Inquiry into the causes of this unexpected, but 
not surprising, calamity leads to the conclusion 
that other and more weighty reasons than those 
usually given at the time (the unfavourable weather 
of the preceding year) were at the root of it. 
Fundamentally, the Russian system of communal 
ownership of land was responsible for the situa- 
tion, and this institution must inevitably act as a 
bar to Russia's extension of her wheat-producing 
powers so long as it exists. A community of 
Russian peasants called the " Mir " holds lands in 
common, divides it into lots, and cultivates it. 
The mir had exhausted itself, and the thirty 
years which elapsed between the emancipation of 
the serfs and the year of the great famine had 
been sufficient to demonstrate that the entire 
foundation upon which Russian agriculture is 
based was radically weak, and that the practical 
result of holding land in common, in Russia at 
least, was an utter failure. It took thirty years 
of experiment to solve the problem, and the 
answer was famine. The peasant will not intel- 
ligently and adequately cultivate land which may 
pass from his possession into the hands of others 
after a few seasons. On the contrary, he works 
it for what it will immediately yield, caring little 
for its future condition, for he does not know how 
soon the mir may a41ot it to another. 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 



65 



Twenty million nominal property owners, for 
such were the famine-stricken peasants, holding 
in common and clinging tenaciously to large areas 
of fertile land, fearful above all else of becoming 
dispossessed of their property interest and of 
joining an already large and constantly increas- 
ing proletariat, yet at the same time begging 
humbly and piteously for the bare food neces- 
sary to maintain existence — this was the strange 
and anomalous sight which was presented to the 
world in the naturally arable district lying within 
the valley of the Volga. That this came about 
primarily from the defective system under which 
the land is held is undoubtedly true. It is also 
true that the Russian peasant does not cultivate 




Russian Peasant Ploughing. 

the land thoroughly under any circumstances, 
that his methods are primitive, and his imple- 
ments mediaeval. Still, the force of example 
might lead him to improve his methods were his 
individual ambition encouraged by a different 



66 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

system of ownership. Under the present con- 
ditions he sees simply as far as the season's work, 
which practically ends his individual connection 
with the land he is tilling. 

Fundamentally wrong in its root, the growth 
of thirty years, which found its flower in a famine, 
was hampered and hindered by adverse circum- 
stances, too numerous to be referred to here at 
length. Parasites had fastened themselves upon 
its body and contributed to its decay. The newly 
liberated serf, left to himself largely, was free to 
make his own future, subject, of course, to well- 
defined limitations; but to the work of develop- 
ment he brought an irresponsible, thriftless, im- 
provident disposition, and a naturally good, but 
utterly untrained, intellect. He had his hands to 
himself and his land ; he was trained to work, but 
not to think. Hence the village usurer, the 
"koulak," the "mir-eater," found a ready victim 
for his schemes, and, naturally, the peasants, as a 
class, became subject to the rapacity of the 
money-lenders, petty officials, small traders, and 
all the varieties of human vermin which in Russia 
fatten on the credulity and the financial ignorance 
and short-sightedness of those who have the ca- 
pacity to work, but not the understanding to 
calculate. 

Even originally the apportionment of land per 
head was but small — not more than enough to 
maintain the peasant in the most primitive man- 
ner. As the family grew and the sons arrived at 
maturity, the land belonging to the commune had 
to be subdivided, so that each might have a share. 
Thus, beyond the discouragement of the system 
itself and the impoverishment worked upon the 
peasant by the village usurer and others, the 



THP; STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 6 J 

natural reduction of the land which he was per- 
mitted to till and enjoy the fruits of, when there 
were any to enjoy, was great. To-day the Russian 
peasant clamours above all for more land, even 
though the land he already has is but half culti- 
vated. It is apparent that the increase in popula- 
tion and consequent reduction in village land per 
capita would, sooner or later, have brought the 
peasant perilously near to hunger, even if he had 
been accustomed to modern methods and machin- 
ery. Short crops and partial famines became 
more and more frequent ; the stores, if there 
existed any, were more continually drawn upon. 
They reached the danger line, fell below it, and 
finally became exhausted. 

It was common in Russia during the famine to 
refer to the condition of the peasant as temporary, 
the result of a bad harvest, and to express the be- 
lief that, with favourable weather, he could recover 
himself. To one who saw the peasants as they 
then were, it is difficult to discover anything in 
their state upon which to base any hope of its 
speedy and permanent amelioration. The famine 
was the climax of several predecessors, gradually 
increasing in intensity and extent until the worst 
was reached. There must be partial famines in 
Russia every year, and the great one of i89i-'92 
would have passed as usual had it not been that 
it marked the very limit of human endurance, 
beyond which w T as death. 

The export of grain from Russia does not 
mean the export of a surplus, but the parting of 
food needed to sustain life. The famine showed 
the great, hollow void in the very heart of the 
empire, and, as long as the present system is con- 
tinued, all the favourable weather which Provi- 



68 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

dence can send will be powerless to fill it. The 
gradual impoverishment of the peasant has been 
going on for forty years, and the end has arrived. 
The limit of exportation from the actual means of 
existence, instead of an exportable surplus, has 
been reached and passed. Russia must, tempo- 
rarily at least, retire from her artificial position as 
an exporter of grain, and turn the products of her 
fields into her depleted store-houses. She must 
give her peasants another start and allow them to 
accumulate a village reserve. As far as one can 
judge, this policy seems in line with that of the 
Government. 

Since the year of the great famine many re- 
forms have been instituted in Russia. A system 
of banking, intended to enable the peasants to 
hold supplies of wheat, has been established, and 
some lines of elevators have been built. Sufficient 
time has not elapsed to demonstrate the real value 
of these reforms ; probably they will contribute to a 
degree in maintaining an agricultural equilibrium, 
and in preventing a recurrence of the calamity of 
i89i-'92, but the future of Russia as a contributor 
to the international wheat markets must, w T hen all 
is said, depend upon the condition of the grain- 
grower, his ability to cultivate his land intelli- 
gently and with the best results. As long as the 
mir exists, as long as communal cultivation re- 
mains an institution of Russia, and the peasants 
grow wheat on ground not individually theirs, so 
long will they continue to scratch the earth's sur- 
face in a desultory, primitive fashion, and be 
satisfied with returns dependent almost entirely 
upon nature's moods. Under such conditions it 
seems improbable that Russia will be able to com- 
pete successfully with the United States and 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 69 

Canada in the world's markets. She will doubt- 
less export more or less of her wheat crop, but 
for her permanent granary Europe must needs 
look elsewhere. 

Much discussion has been given to the possi- 
bilities of Siberia as a wheat-producing country. 
It has been claimed that in time this great terri- 
tory would re-enforce Russia, and, as a result of 
the building of the trans-Siberian railway and the 
settlement of Siberia by emigrants from Russia 
who are naturally wheat-growers, a great, new, in- 
exhaustible source of w T heat supply would come 
into existence. A few years ago American farm- 
ers and millers were greatly concerned over this 
Siberian possibility and many of them feared that, 
with the opening of the new territory, there would 
appear upon the scene a fresh competitor for the 
position of the world's food purveyor. Time passed, 
the great railway was built, but as yet neither the 
Siberian miller nor the Siberian wheat-grower has 
made his appearance in the markets. What this 
country can do in the way of wheat production on 
a large scale is yet to be demonstrated. Possibly 
the day may come when it will be counted as im- 
portant in the list of wheat-raisers, but at present 
this seems too remote for serious consideration, 
and the future wheat-fields of the world seem to 
be extending in an altogether different direction. 
The Asiatic is becoming a wheaten-bread eater ; 
by the time his taste for the bread of civilization 
is fully developed the Siberian miller may find a 
market in China and Japan for his product, if he 
is able to compete with the American miller of the 
Pacific coast, who is now exploiting this field suc- 
cessfully. As far as Europe is concerned, there 
seems no prospect, remote or immediate, that Si- 



70 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

berian wheat and flour will find its way thither in 
any considerable quantities. 



CHAPTER VI 

Argentina — Natural advantages — Methods of growing — 
Character of berry and its grower — Export trade — 
Future possibilities 

Having considered briefly the wheat situation 
in Europe and the possibilities of the world's sup- 
plies in that direction, we turn naturally towards 
the west to learn something of the sources of food 
afforded by the newer countries, and to ascertain 
to what extent the increasing millions of bread- 
eaters in Christendom may rely for their favourite 
cereal on the lands of the western hemisphere. 
Immediately we are impressed with the fact that 
we are reaching that portion of the globe where 
the home consumption still bears such a small rela- 
tion to the amount of wheat produced that expor- 
tation is a natural and necessary procedure. In- 
deed it is apparent that nature has passed over the 
European fields, as practically utilized to the limit 
of their possibilities, and has opened in the new 
world far vaster territories suitable to wheat pro- 
duction from which she designs to supply the in- 
creasing needs of mankind. 

First in order, but not in importance, is Argen- 
tina, South America. Before moving northward, 
let us see what this section of the earth's sur- 
face has done and can probably do to help in 
the great work of furnishing bread for others 
than itself. Argentina, or " La Repiiblica Argen- 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 7 1 

tina," as the Argentinos prefer to call their coun- 
try, certainly possesses great natural advantages 
as a wheat-grower. It has extensive prairies very 
similar to those of Minnesota and Dakota. These 
lands are easily worked and produce fair yields 
of wheat. Moreover, land is cheap, and even 
without renting or buying it a colonist who has a 
little money, enough to provide horses and a few 
implements and to feed himself and his family for 
a time, can procure land to work on shares. For 
this he has no rent to pay in cash. But when the 
harvest is gathered he delivers one-third, or what- 
ever the agreed proportion may be, to the owner 
of the land. Owing to the mild climate the living 
expenses of the colonist may be reduced to a very 
low figure. Many colonists start with the in- 
tention of working the land for the period of the 
lease, usually five or seven years, and then of 
seeking " green fields and pastures new." For 
this reason they do not waste either time or money 
on their habitations. Many of them are satisfied 
to live in hovels made by drying the soil, a sort 
of adobe hut. Perhaps the colonist will indulge 
in the luxury of a galvanized iron roof, a door, 
and a window. These he can easily carry away 
with him when he moves to other fields. These are 
the possibilities of cheap wheat production in Ar- 
gentina, and much of the wheat grown there is 
produced under the conditions mentioned. On 
the other hand, there are many colonists who own 
or permanently occupy the lands they cultivate 
and who have a higher standard of living. 

The wheat-growing districts of the Argentine 
Republic lie between the 30th and 40th degrees of 
south latitude. The seasons are therefore the re- 
verse of those in the United States, and greater 



72 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

cold is experienced in the southern than in the 
northern part of the country. Planting is done 
from May to August according to the locality, 
and the season and harvesting is done in Decem- 
ber and January. The heat in the Argentine 
summer is about the same as the heat in July and 
August in the central portion of the United States. 
In the Argentine winter, from May until October, 
a lower temperature prevails and rains are more 
general. In the northern and central portions of 
the Argentine Republic snow is seldom seen on the 
plains, although in the southern districts, for in- 
stance, around Bahia Blanca, snow is not unusual. 
The winter is not sufficiently severe in any part 
of the country to make it necessary to house cat- 
tle. This fact contributes to reduce the cost of 
farming as compared, for instance, with the cost 
of farming in Minnesota or the Dakotas, where 
live stock has to be housed and fed for a certain 
period every winter. But nature, which is kind to 
the Argentinos in this respect, is rather unpleasant 
to them in other ways. For example, in the mat- 
ter of rainfall. It has been the unfortunate ex- 
perience of the Argentine farmer on many occa- 
sions to suffer either from drought during growing 
time or from rain during harvest. Extensive hail- 
storms also occur, so that in many districts insur- 
ance against damage by hail is generally secured 
by the colonists. 

A natural advantage favouring the growing of 
wheat in the Argentine is the proximity of the 
wheat-fields to the seaboard or the great nav- 
igable stream, the Plate. This extraordinary 
river, which is something like one hundred miles 
wide at its mouth, is formed by the confluence 
of two streams, the Parana and the Uruguay. 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 73 

These come together not far above the city of 
Buenos Aires. They form the southern, eastern, 
and western boundaries of one of the Argentine 
provinces bearing the name of Entre Rios, " Be- 
tween Rivers." The Parana, which forms the 
eastern border line of the great wheat-growing 
province of Santa Fe, is navigable for large steam- 
ers as far up as Rosario, the great interior wheat 
port, and for sailing vessels and even for steamers 
of considerable size for some distance farther up. 
Rosario is about one hundred and ninety miles 
north of Buenos Aires, while Colastine, the port 
of the city of Santa Fe, is over two hundred miles 
farther inland. Thus for four hundred miles in- 
land the Plate and the Parana are navigable for 
large vessels, and all the Argentine wheat-fields 
are practically on or very near the seaboard. 
None of the wheat-fields of the province of Santa 
Fe, for instance, are over two hundred miles from 
the port of Colastine. About three hundred miles 
would be the longest railway haul necessary for 
any of the Argentine wheat. This would more 
than cover the distance from deep water to 
Trenque Lauquen, in the interior of the province 
of Buenos Aires, or to Villa Maria, in the prov- 
ince of Cordova. These towns are about the re- 
motest points from deep water from which wheat 
is exported. If ocean steamers had easy access 
to the great lakes, as they should have, the wheat- 
grower in Minnesota would be situated about as 
advantageously with respect to proximity to the 
seaboard as the Argentine farmer, except that the 
Argentine water-way is never obstructed by ice. 

The Argentine is now well supplied with rail- 
ways. The lines of the Central Argentine, the 
Western of Buenos Aires, the Santa Fe, the Buenos 



74 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 



Aires and Rosario, and the Entre Rios railways, 
with numerous less important lines, traverse 
the wheat-fields of the western and northern dis- 
tricts, while the Great Southern Railway covers 



■ ««, 




Loading Wheat, Argentina. 

the southern districts. The latter is the most ex- 
tensive railway undertaking in the Argentine. 
The head office of the company is in London. It 
has over two thousand miles of line in operation, 
and employs about 11,000 men, and, according to 
the last returns available, has an equipment of 
247 engines, 461 passenger cars, and 8,521 freight 
cars. In the nineties the growth of traffic in 
wheat, maize, and other commodities was so great 
and unexpected that the railway companies were 
wholly unable to cope with it, and wheat-shippers 
frequently had to see their wheat lying unpro- 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 75 

tected at country stations for weeks before they 
could secure cars. Now the situation is much im- 
proved in this respect. Delays are rare, except in 
the busy season, and the wheat-shipper is well 
served by the railways, although the freight rates 
charged on wheat are higher than those current 
for similar distances in the United States. 

The grasshoppers which in past years have 
caused such havoc to the Argentine wheat crop 
have been vigorously fought both by public and 
private enterprise. Entomologists have been 
brought to the country from the United States 
and elsewhere to study the habits of the locusts 
and the best methods of exterminating them, 
with the result that the damage caused by these 
pests of late years has been slight. 

Wheat-growing received its great impetus in 
the Argentine about 1890, at the time of the 
Baring failure. Prior to that time the country 
had been having a prosperous period, and there 
was an era of great extravagance. Many land- 
owners borrowed money on the security of their 
land, the loans being payable in gold. After the 
financial crash much of the mortgaged land was 
thrown on the market at very low prices, and 
its cheapness led to the cultivation of wheat 
on a large scale. In 1890 the Argentine, which 
but a few years before had imported flour from 
the United States, produced a crop of wheat of 
over 30 million bushels. At that time the popu- 
lation of the country was about 4,000,000. A 
cause that contributed largely to the increase of 
wheat-growing in the Argentine during this and 
succeeding years was the heavy gold premium. 
The wheat-shipper received gold for his wheat, 
and paid for it in the depreciated paper currency 



J 6 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

of the country. In 1901 the gold dollar was worth 
3.87 paper dollars. Thus the farmer who received 
the equivalent of 40 cents per bushel gold for his 
wheat at the farm actually received $1.54 per 
bushel in paper currency. This seemed like a 
high price and really was a high price, because he 
paid for his labour and for many articles of con- 
sumption in paper money, and at prices that were 
altogether out of proportion to the premium on 
gold. That is, while the wheat-grower received a 
greatly enhanced price for his wheat in paper 
money, owing to the high premium on gold, he 
was not obliged to pay as high prices relatively 
for labour and articles of domestic production. 
On such implements as harvesters or other im- 
ported machinery he certainly had to pay a price 
based on the full premium, but still he derived a 
very considerable advantage from the monetary 
condition that prevailed in the nineties. 

Under the stimulus of these influences, and 
helped by an increasing immigration that received 
liberal support from the state, the wheat crops of 
the Argentine showed progressive increases till 
in 1893 the crop reached the respectable total of 
90 million bushels. Since that year it has fluctu- 
ated, owing largely to weather damage. The crop 
of 1889-1900, as reported by Ernesto Danvers, 
amounted to 104,524,000 bushels. 

Farming methods in the Argentine are still 
somewhat primitive, particularly as to the method 
of preparing the ground and of caring for the 
wheat till it is sold. Thus the Buenos Aires cor- 
respondent of the Northwestern Miller, writing in 
April, 1902, of the Argentine farmers, says: 
" They simply scratch the surface, and then ex- 
pect the seed to take root and the plant to be 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 77 

strong and healthy. They are a lazy crowd. 
They are always on the make and dread expendi- 
ture. They do not take care in preparing the 
land, as they have not the sense to see that if the 
land is well prepared, and a little more time and 
money spent in doing this, the returns will be 
greater and they will benefit accordingly." Much 
agricultural machinery is shipped to the Argen- 
tine from the United States. American harvesters 
are in general use, though thrashing-machines of 
English manufacture seem to be given the prefer- 
ence. Light ploughing is the rule, and even this 
is not very well done. There is a gradual im- 
provement going on in the use of better farming 
appliances, but it is very slow. 

Much of the land is very weedy, and the weeds 
in many cases have the effect of causing the grain 
to heat in the stack. The soil is generally fertile, 
with a subsoil of clay that holds the moisture, 
and enables the land to pass through pretty severe 
drought, without serious damage to the wheat. 
The yields of wheat vary greatly according to the 
district, the methods of farming, and to the season. 
For the crop of 1899-1900 the average yield of 
wheat in the provinces of Santa Fe, Buenos Aires, 
Cordova, and Entre Rios was approximately 12^ 
bushels. Formerly the average yield of wheat in 
Santa Fe, which was the first province to come 
into prominence as a wheat-grower, was placed at 
10 to 11 bushels. The improved yield is no doubt 
a result of improved methods of farming. Owing 
to the partial crop failures during the last few 
years, the average yield per acre has been consid- 
erably reduced. A recent estimate by the Argen- 
tine Minister of Agriculture places the yield for 
the whole country, for the years 1895 to 1901 



78 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

inclusive, at about 6 to 7 bushels per acre. 
Among the causes for crop failure are enumerated 
rust, blight, mildew, hailstorms, frost, torrential 
rains, severe drought, and locust depredations. 
Much damage is caused to the Argentine wheat 
crop every year after it is harvested by the lack 
of suitable granaries on the farm and of granaries 
or elevators at the country railway stations, and 
even at the ports of shipment. The experiment 
of erecting a few country elevators on the Amer- 
ican plan, made by one or two of the Argentine 
railways some years ago, was such a complete 
failure that it has not since been repeated. The 
Argentine farmer seems to prefer storing his 
wheat on the ground in sacks, perhaps covered by 
a tarpaulin and perhaps not, rather than pay ele- 
vator charges. It can be easily demonstrated that 
the loss and damage caused to the Argentine wheat 
crop each year through lack of suitable protection 
after harvest is far in excess of the cost of prop- 
erly warehousing it. But each farmer seems to 
prefer to take his chances in this respect. Even 
in the case of large farms, operated by English 
land companies, wheat is stored on the ground in 
sacks, although some protection is afforded by tar- 
paulins. In a country as subject to sudden and 
violent rainfalls as the Argentine, such a method 
of handling grain must inevitably result in serious 
damage. 

The wheat chiefly exported from the Argentine, 
and known in the European market as Santa Fe or 
Plate wheat, has a berry resembling American red 
winter wheat in appearance. The natural weight 
of the wheat varies in different seasons. In 1902 
many cargoes of Plate wheat offered in London 
ran as high as 62 and 63 pounds to the bushel. 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 79 

The wheat berry when cut open is floury rather 
than flinty in appearance, and it produces flour of 
good colour. Yet it is not lacking in gluten, and 
the gluten has excellent properties of expansion. 
Millers, however, often find a great difference in 
the milling value of different lots of Argentine 
wheat, and this no doubt is owing largely to dam- 
age received by the wheat after being harvested. 
The damage, in many cases, does not show on an 
examination of the berry. It often happens that 
Argentine wheat which has received a good soak- 
ing at the farm or at the shipping station, from 
rain, will afterward be restored to an apparently 
perfect condition by being handled over. This is 
done either by the peons or workmen who spread 
the wheat out on the ground on tarpaulins and 
then turn it over with shovels, or by the elevators 
at the ports, which run it over. There are many 
days in the Argentine when there is a good air ; 
Buenos Aires means "good airs." If handled 
over on one of these days when there is a good 
drying air, combined with warm sunshine, damp 
wheat will dry very rapidly, and after drying will 
bear little trace outwardly of its former wet con- 
dition, although the wetting and subsequent dry- 
ing; have an injurious effect on the milling prop- 
erties of the grain. 

Some of the wheat grown in the south is flinty 
and has almost the appearance of the hard Fife 
wheat grown in Dakota or Manitoba. Not a little 
macaroni wheat, known locally as Candeal, is 
grown in the Argentine. It has a long berry, is 
light in colour and very hard and flinty in texture, 
like the rice-wheat or " goose-wheat " grown in 
the United States. This is used for making semo- 
lina or macaroni, for which there is a consider- 



80 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

able demand from the Italian colonists. A variety 
of wheat that is extensively used by the Argen- 
tine millers is the Frances or French wheat. This 
is softer than the Barletta wheat. Like soft wheat 
elsewhere, it gives a large yield, but is more sub- 
ject to weather damage than the hard sorts. A 
few other kinds of wheat are grown, but those 
here named are the wheats chiefly seen in the 
Argentine. 

Nearly all nationalities are represented among 
the Argentine wheat-growers. There are colonies 
of French, German, and Russian settlers. For 
the most part these nationalities keep to them- 
selves, and to a great extent they each retain 
the native customs and modes of living and of 
farming. At Carcarana, a little country place 
about an hour and a half by rail from Rosario, 
there are many natives of the United States. 
A colony that has attracted considerable atten- 
tion is the Welsh colony at Chubut. This little 
colony, situated far south of any Argentine town 
and remote from the railways leading to the 
capital, was connected with the seacoast by a 
narrow-gauge railway about forty-five miles long. 
The Welsh raised good wheat, but being discour- 
aged by a series of floods and disasters in 1902, 
they determined to migrate to Canada. Some 
of the Argentine papers reproached the govern- 
ment rather strongly for failing to help the Welsh, 
and for not making it an object to them to remain 
in the Argentine. The bulk of the wheat produced 
in the Argentine is raised by Italian colonists ; 
therefore in considering the character of the 
Argentine wheat-grower, all but the Italian can 
be left out of the account. The Italian lives 
cheaply, is frugal and thrifty, and very often 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 8 1 

amasses a fair competence. To put it mildly, he 
farms unscientifically, and he likes to idle when 
work is not pressing. But at harvest-time he is 
the personification of diligence ; not only himself, 
but all his female relations, from his daughter to 
his grandmother. As before mentioned, he is 
often content to live in a poor apology for a 
house, and to do without luxuries or even what 
would be considered necessities by farmers of 
other countries ; so he makes a very awkward 
competitor. Shiploads of Italians go over to the 
Argentine at harvest-time to return to their own 
land when harvest is over. The number of farm- 
ers who own or permanently occupy their own 
lands seems to be increasing. 

Argentina exports bran largely to Brazil, as it 
is not required in the country to any great extent 
owing to the abundance of feed afforded by the 
natural grasses and by the wonderfully prolific 
alfalfa. It also exports considerable flour to Bra- 
zil. Its wheat exports go to Great Britain and 
the Continent, and a small proportion of flour and 
bran is shipped to the same destinations. Before 
1890 the Argentine wheat exports were inconsid- 
erable, but in that year they amounted to 12,244,- 
240 bushels. By 1893 they had increased to 37,- 
628,640 bushels, and when these exports were 
followed in 1894 by wheat shipment amount- 
ing to 60,026,646 bushels, grain men the world 
over began to wonder whether at this rate of 
increase Argentine was to take the leading place 
as a wheat shipper. The succeeding year, how- 
ever, showed diminished exports. In 1897 the 
wheat exports were only 3,801,837 bushels. In 
1900 they came up again, and reached 76 million 
bushels, but in 1901 they fell back to 36 million, 
6 



82 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 



and in the current year, 1902, they are likely to be 
still less, as the exports for the first three months 
of 1902 were but 9,538,939 bushels, against 15,- 
954,095 for the first quarter of 1901. The Argen- 
tine flour exports have not yet reached large 
figures. In 1899 Argentina made its largest flour 
shipments, namely, the equivalent of 679,588 bar- 
rels of 196 pounds. But in 1900 the flour exports 




Interior of an Argentina Mill. 

fell off to 585,177 barrels. The milling capacity 
of the country is, however, far in excess of local 
requirements, and the Argentine millers are more 
and more feeling the stress of local competition, 
and the necessity for exporting. Some of the 
more modern mills are suitably situated for the 
export trade, but the majority of them are at a 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 83 

disadvantage in this respect, and there are no 
mills in the country that can compare with the 
large exporting mills of the United States in 
size or economy of manufacture. For one thing, 
the absence of a home demand for bran is a great 
handicap to milling on a large scale in the Ar- 
gentine. 

In 1896 Kingsland Smith, the special corre- 
spondent sent out by the Northwestern Miller to 
report on wheat-growing in the Argentine, after 
travelling all over the country, wrote as follows re- 
garding the future of wheat-growing in the Argen- 
tine : " I should say that in the next ten years the 
Argentine wheat crop will show great fluctuations. 
Some years it will be heavy, and again it will fall 
off greatly; but at the end of the ten years 
the crop will not have increased in anything 
like the same proportions it has in the past." 
Thus far, the foregoing prediction has proved 
an accurate forecast. The crops have shown 
wide fluctuations as indicated by exports vary- 
ing from under 4 million bushels in 1897 to 
over 76 million in 1900. Some of the improve- 
ments indicated at that time by Kingsland Smith 
as likely and necessary, such as better elevator 
facilities at the ports, are now in process of real- 
ization. Large elevators of modern construc- 
tion are being erected at Buenos Aires, so that, 
with the existing elevators there and at Rosario, 
the country will be fairly well supplied with port 
elevators. 

As far as can be seen to-day, there will be a 
gradual growth in the production of wheat in the 
Argentina, especially as new lands are opened up 
by railway extension in the south and west ; but it 
will be long, if the time ever comes, when Argen- 



84 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

tina will occupy a position materially different 
from her present one as a provider of the world's 
breadstuffs. 



CHAPTER VII 

Wheat in the United States — The world's greatest pro- 
ducer — The prophets of the late '50s — Washington as 
farmer and miller — Western march of wheat — The 
Ohio limit — Futility of estimating possibilities 

In the story of the King of Cereals we now 
come to the chapter which deals with his greatest 
achievement, that of turning a wilderness inhab- 
ited by savages into a vast field of wheat peopled 
by a civilized and cultivated nation — the develop- 
ment of a great republic, upon which older nations 
rely in a large and increasing measure for their 
supply of bread. King Cotton and King Corn 
have been extolled in song and story, but the 
glomes of good King Wheat, far surpassing those 
of his fellow monarchs, have not as yet been the 
theme of the song-maker. Perhaps his subjects 
have been too busy extending his domains to 
properly exalt his greatness and beneficence. 

The United States now occupies the stage of 
the world's theatre as the greatest wheat-produc- 
ing country on the face of the earth, and if we 
may judge by the average yield per acre, which is 
far less than that of many other and older coun- 
tries, it is capable of producing, if the need exists, 
very much larger crops than even those of its 
record-breaking year, which was 1901, when it 
raised 721 million bushels. This need, in order 
to stimulate Americans to even greater results, 
must express itself in the form usually best appre- 



86 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

ciated by them — the almighty dollar. In other 
words, if a continued shortage in the world's 
wheat supply should occur, it would, of course, 
lead to a material advance in price. This pre- 
mium would bring out the best America could do 
in the way of a crop of wheat, and no one can 
accurately estimate what that would be. The 
effect of higher prices on wheat production is the 
unknown factor which throws the wheat-famine 
prophets out of their reckoning and brings their 
pessimistic forecasts to nothing. 

According to the very exhaustive and perfect- 
ly logical reasoning of many of these gentlemen, 
the consumption of wheat should have caught up 
with the supply in the United States some years 
ago. The statistics they presented certainly 
proved their case, and their deductions were en- 
tirely reasonable and quite convincing. Figures 
ought not to lie, but nevertheless they very often 
do, and are caught at it. Nearly fifty years ago a 
worthy gentleman, who was at that time an author- 
ity on American wheat, predicted that the limit of 
the area capable of producing wheat in the United 
States had been reached. He was quite certain 
that Ohio was the western extremity of the wheat- 
producing region, and in his excellent book, The 
Wheat Plant, may be found arguments based on 
facts in regard to the character of the soil neces- 
sary to wheat-growing and the nature of the 
country west of his limit, which actually proved 
the logical correctness of his statements. He de- 
nounced as vain boasting the claim that the United 
States could feed the world from its surplus of 
wheat, and, while admitting that "in a country so 
extensive as ours we need not fear a failure," he 
declared that "beyond feeding our great and in- 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 87 

creasing population we shall not generally have 
any great surplus." He predicted that the tide of 
population then moving westward must quickly 
stop, as it would shortly reach the verge not only 
of the wheat region, but of the limit of agriculture 
as well. Then " it must soon return eastward in 
search of the wheat-producing region. "' He there- 
fore advised the Ohio farmers, who occupied the 
western wheat limit, to preserve their lands, hus- 
band their resources, and stop the deterioration 
of the soil by the liberal application of manure 
and by better tillage. 

The Wheat Plant, by John H. Klippart, was 
written in 1859, and, apart from its chapter on the 
wheat-producing region in theUnited States, is still 
regarded as an authority on many of the subjects 
it treats of. It is a work of some seven hundred 
pages; a portion of it published in the Ohio Agri- 
cultural Report for 1857 caused the entire edition 
of twenty thousand copies to be absorbed in less 
than sixty days from publication. The author 
was no ordinary scribbler, but might well be ac- 
cepted as a competent authority on the subject of 
which he wrote, for he was corresponding secre- 
tary of the Ohio State Board of Agriculture ; mem- 
ber of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Cleve- 
land ; honorary member of the Western Academy 
of Natural Sciences, Cincinnati ; and correspond- 
ing secretary of the Columbus Scientific Associa- 
tion. He judged shrewdly according to the light 
of his time. If the Ohio farmers followed his ad- 
vice in the matter of improving their land and 
husbanding its resources, they did wisely, and it 
may be that to the warning given by Klippart is, 
in some measure, due the fact that Ohio still ranks 
high in the list of winter-wheat-producing States. 



88 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

It is to be feared that if Mr. Klippart confi- 
dently expected the return of the pilgrims who 
passed on beyond the borders of Ohio in search 
of wheat-fields, and waited for them to come back 
to the limits of his wheat-producing area, he must 
have grown weary, for these indomitable con- 
querors of the soil not only journeyed beyond the 
Mississippi, but their children are now crowding 
across the Canadian border, and still wheat springs 
up in their wake. In 1857 Ohio raised 25 million 
bushels of wheat. The average crop of the State 
for five years ending 1899 was nearly 35 millions. 
The total wheat crop of the United States in 1850 
was 100 millions; the average crop for five years 
ending 1899 was 530 millions. In 1850 the 
United States exported 1 million bushels of wheat 
and 2 million barrels of flour. In 1901 it export- 
ed 178 million bushels of wheat and 19 million 
barrels of flour. Writing in 1859, Klippart said 
that unless the yield to the acre was increased 
"our surplus will by the next census be measured 
by the algebraic quantity of minus." The author 
of The Wheat Plant was not the last authority on 
wheat to predict that the limit of production was 
within sight, and that not only the United States 
but the world would shortly overtake its supply 
and experience a wheat famine, and these wrote 
seriously and sincerely, all with ample data to 
draw their conclusions from, yet all have been 
thus far mistaken ; not only has the area of pos- 
sible wheat culture exceeded all expectations, but, 
as already said, under the impetus of an advance 
in price, land supposed to have been permanently 
abandoned for wheat has been found to yield an 
excellent crop. Advanced methods of agricul- 
ture and the liberal application of manure may be 










S 

< 

< 



90 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

excellent promoters of satisfactory wheat crops ; 
but to bring forth the best the fields are capable 
of doing there is nothing so good as a " corner " 
in wheat and a substantial advance in its price. 

The wheat map of the United States shows 
that forty-three States and Territories raise wheat 
in considerable quantities. In the New Eng- 
land States, many of the Southern States, and 
the Middle and most of the Western States it is 
an important crop. Its growth began with the 
coming of the first emigrants to the colonies; it 
has increased with the development and extension 
of the republic. George Washington was a wheat- 
raiser and a miller. From the time he married 
until almost the day of his death there was no 
concern at Mount Vernon which, perhaps, more 
occupied his mind than the condition of his wheat 
crops, the price of flour, and the operations of his 
mill. He was the greatest landholder in America. 
No miller of to-day watches the quotations more 
closely than Washington noted every fluctuation in 
American and European wheat prices. In 1765 he 
decided that he ought to give more time "to the 
growth of wheat and the manufacturing of it into 
flour/' When he returned to Mount Vernon at. 
the close of the war he referred proudly to what 
he had previously accomplished in wheat culture, 
and declared that " no wheat that has ever yet 
fallen under my observation exceeds the wheat 
which some years ago I cultivated extensively, 
but which from inattention during my absence of 
almost nine years from home has got so mixed or 
degenerated as scarcely to retain any of its origi- 
nal characteristics properly." Wheat has ever 
been the friend of peace, and in time of war is 
wont to show its disapproval by becoming demor- 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 9 1 

alized. After Washington secured time to put his 
estate in order, the Mount Vernon brand of flour 
resumed its value. The year 1795 was Washing- 
ton's best for flour. He expressed his satisfaction 
at having sold his product early in the year at the 
rate of $12 a barrel on account of the scarcity in 
Europe. Later he sold more at $13, and expected 
it might reach even $20 a barrel. He exported 
much of the product of his mill to the West 
Indies. In the last letter he wrote he said that 
" as a farmer, wheat and flour are my principal 
concerns." The first President of the United 
States was proud of the fact that the famous 
Mount Vernon brand of flour was synonymous 
with the finest in the world. 

As the tide of emigration moved ever west- 
ward, the extension of the wheat area followed it. 
Wheat is the favourite crop of the pioneer ; he can 
most readily use it for his own purposes, and it 
always commands money. The wheat of a virgin 
soil is strong and hardy, but subject to pests, 
which grow less destructive in older lands. In 
1850, as already shown, authorities considered 
that, so far as wheat was concerned, the westward 
limit ended with Ohio. It is interesting to note 
the census returns from the various States in 1840 
in comparison with the figures of the present time. 
The entire wheat crop in 1840 was but 88 million 
bushels — about one-half of the average crop for 
five years ending 1899 of Minnesota, the two 
Dakotas, and Nebraska, and about one-sixth of 
the average crop of the United States for the 
same period. California in 1840 was not credited 
with any wheat, nor was Minnesota. Of course, 
the Dakotas, Nebraska, Colorado, Washington, 
Nevada, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, 



92 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Kansas, Texas, and 
Oklahoma were not among the wheat-growing 
States of that time. Ohio led with over 16 mil- 
lion bushels ; she now averages nearly 35 mil- 
lion. Some of the States on the list in 1840 
raise less wheat now than then. For instance, a 
comparison of the average for five years ending 
1899 with that of 184c shows the wheat product 
of Alabama to have diminished by half; Maine 
raises less than 10 per cent of the wheat she pro- 
duced in 1840; Mississippi but 15 percent; New 
Hampshire about 6 per cent; New York shrunk 
from 12 to 7 millions, and Vermont now raises 
about one-quarter of her 1840 crop. Some of the 
older and thickly populated States which were 
important contributors to the total of sixty years 
ago are still large wheat-producers and show 
great gains. Maryland has increased her crop 
three-fold; New Jersey has doubled hers; so also 
has North Carolina and Tennessee, while Penn- 
sylvania has increased about 80 per cent. Georgia, 
South Carolina, and Virginia raise practically the 
same amount as they did in 1840. The great in- 
crease among the States on the census list at that 
time, as compared with 1899, is found in a section 
then considered beyond the natural western limit 
for profitable wheat-growing. Illinois now pro- 
duces on an average nearly nine times, Indiana 
over six times, Iowa one hundred times, Kentucky 
more than double, Michigan about ten times, and 
Missouri fifteen times more than the census re- 
turns of 1840. 

Even twenty years later, Klippart spoke of the 
wheat-growing possibilities of these States very 
slightingly. Kentucky and Missouri, he said, 
"are best adapted to corn, and wheat can never 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 



93 



be regarded as the great staple of either." " In- 
diana, Illinois, and the i far west ' are painted to us 
as the great wheat regions to which we are to look 




American Country Elevator. 

for the wheat to supply the world. The common 
idea is that this whole region is peculiarly adapted 
to wheat ; but this, like many other popular theo- 



94 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

ries, may not be strictly correct." Thereupon the 
excellent gentleman proceeds to prove that these 
States, by reason of their soils, are not to be relied 
upon as wheat-producers. " To avoid the evils of 
winter-killing in Illinois," to quote Klippart, 
"they have resorted to the culture of spring- 
wheat, sown on the land where the fall-sowed 
crop had been winter-killed. This increases the 
quantity at the expense of the quality, for every 
one who has observed the quotations of wheat in 
New York must have observed the depreciation 
in Illinois wheat." As to Iowa and Wisconsin, 
which was the limit of the northwestern horizon 
in Klippart's time, their pretensions were readily 
brushed aside by quoting the geological survey 
carried on by order of Congress, which gave ex- 
cellent reasons why " those Western States can- 
not be permanently first-rate wheat-lands." It 
seems almost cruel to the authorities of 1859 to 
add that in 1901 these two States produced a 
trifle of some 30 million bushels. 

In support of his contention that Ohio marked 
the western limit of profitable wheat-growing, and 
that the far west was " mostly a desert, incapable 
of producing anything, much less good wheat 
crops," Klippart quoted Professor Henry, sec- 
retary of the Smithsonian Institution, who said : 
" We are nearer the confines of the healthy ex- 
pansion of our agricultural operations over new 
ground than those who have not paid definite 
attention to the subject could readily imagine. 
The whole space of the west, between the 98th 
meridian and the Rocky Mountains, denominated 
the great American plains, is a barren waste, over 
which the eye may roam to the extent of the 
visible horizon, with scarcely an object to break 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 95 

the monotony." Emery's Journal of Agriculture, 
then published in Chicago, was also quoted by 
Klippart in support of his argument, and he 
summed up his conclusions by saying : " This nar- 
rows down the wheat region to a small territory, 
and instead of the vain boast that we can feed the 
world from our surplus wheat, indicates that we 
must husband our resources and stop the deteri- 
oration of the soil, or we shall soon be importers 
of wheat instead of exporters/' 

Apropos of forecasts and prophecies, a very 
singular instance of the ability of those who are 
remote from the scene of action to sometimes 
make a closer estimate of the possibilities than 
the authority on the spot, is shown in an old 
letter written from Germany by the father-in-law 
of Mr. Philip H. Postel, of Mascoutah, Illinois, to 
him in America. Mr. Postel is still living at the 
age of eighty-five, and the letter is in his posses- 
sion. It was written in 1854. Therein the writer 
advises his son-in-law, then and now a miller, to 
remove from Illinois and buy all the land he 
could secure near St. Anthony in Minnesota, 
where, he was confident, would be situated the 
future milling and grain centre of the United 
States. This prophecy seems almost marvellous, 
for at the time it was made the northwest was 
quite undeveloped, the wheat crop of Minnesota 
was trifling, and the value of the wheat raised 
there was as yet one of nature's undiscovered 
secrets. How the shrewd and far-seeing German 
miller was able at long distance to hit the mark 
exactly, while the best American authorities, with 
every facility for ascertaining the facts, went so 
far wide of the truth in estimating the possibilities 
of the west, is beyond conjecture ; yet he actually 



g6 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

did it, and his prophecy was not a mere chance 
shot, but the result of serious and careful study of 
conditions, and he had sufficient confidence in it 
to warrant him in urging his son-in-law to act in 
accordance with it. 

Perhaps too much space has been given to the 
point of view of the wheat authorities of the late 
'50s, but to those who realize what is now being 
accomplished in wheat-raising in the then despised 
west and northwest, such prophecies are both in- 
teresting and valuable. At that time wheat cul- 
ture was midway of the century and really seemed 
to have paused in its progress. The country was 
on the eve of a great civil war which was to drain 
it of its farmers, north and south, for some years ; 
which would scatter and commingle men from 
various States; change boundaries; alter condi- 
tions; open up new avenues of effort, and even- 
tually result in sending towards the west thousands 
of people who would develop new territories and 
raise new crops. The authorities quoted were 
thoughtful men who reasoned logically, from the 
best information then obtainable. Their forecasts 
seem absurd now, but they were rational then. 
These men could not possibly see the immense 
changes which were about to ensue in the agricul- 
tural expansion of their country. At that time, 
spring-wheat occupied a position analogous to that 
of macaroni or " goose-wheat " to-day. It was 
regarded as far inferior to winter-wheat, and 
hardly worth cultivating. As no one knows the 
possibilities of macaroni-wheat now, so, at that 
time, the authorities referred to could not know 
that a way would be found of grinding spring- 
wheat which would make it immensely valuable, 
and enable States wherein it could be grown to 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 97 

add 300 million bushels to the annual product of 
the country. 

Their prophecies, made in good faith as the 
result of careful study, merely show how futile 
conjectures on the possibilities of wheat produc- 
tion are at best. Probably our confident predic- 
tions of 1902 will, fifty years hence, seem equally 
absurd and narrow. In wheat production, nature 
keeps ahead of man's requirements. A very few- 
years ago, men smiled when the Canadian north- 
west was spoken of as a possible great wheat 
country ; they, like Klippart, were sure the limit 
had been reached, and were able to prove it and 
quote chapter and verse conclusively. These 
prophets and seers are not in evidence now ; the 
returns of Manitoba, Assiniboia, and Saskatchewan 
on the last crop make them dumb. 



CHAPTER VIII 

The wheat-fields of to-day — Agricultural development of 
the United States since the civil war — The western 
and northwestern wheat area — Wheat of the Pacific 
coast — The Oriental trade — American methods of rais- 
ing wheat — Per capita consumption and exports 

With the close of the civil war in the United 
States, the growth of wheat began to assume some- 
thing like its more recent proportions. Even 
during this mighty struggle between contending 
armies, the annual crop was, as compared with 
that of 1850, very large. In 1862 it was 186 mil- 
lions, and in 1863 190 millions, nearly double the 
crop of 1850. This was doubtless due largely to 
the fact that much of the area sown to wheat was 
7 



98 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

north of the scene of war, and, although the pres- 
ence of a large portion of the able-bodied farm- 
ers at the front must have handicapped agricul- 
tural operations to a large extent, nevertheless 
large wheat harvests were gathered during the 
entire war period. 

In 1866 a crop of 152 millions was the last 
which fell below the 200 million mark. From 
that year until 1874 the annual harvest w T as be- 
tween 200 and 280 millions ; then it made a record 
of 309 millions. Four years later it crossed the 
400 million mark, and another record was broken ; 
from 1878 to 1882 it was less than 400 millions 
but once, and nearly every year it greatly exceeded 
that figure. The line marking a product of half a 
billion bushels was passed in 1882. By this time 
the opening of the northwest and the consequent 
increase of spring-wheat production, due to what 
is known as " the milling revolution," had been 
making large additions to the country's wheat 
supply. In 1884 another high point was reached, 
the crop being 512 million bushels. Two years, 
1885 and 1890, yielded less than the decade's 
average crop, but in 1891 the harvest reached 
the unprecedented figure of 611 millions. Seven 
years later even this was eclipsed by a crop of 
675 millions, which in turn was outranked by 
the yield of 1901, which was 721 million bushels. 
Whether this record can be equalled or exceeded 
in the near future is doubtful. The spring-wheat 
crop of 1901 was 320 million bushels, and compe- 
tent authorities consider that Minnesota and the 
Dakotas, the chief spring-wheat States, have almost 
if not quite reached their limit in this direction, 
owing, not to climatic or soil conditions, but 
rather to the fact that flax and stock-raising are 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 99 

becoming more important and profitable indus- 
tries in this section. A decided increase in the 
price of wheat, if maintained for a considerable 
time, would doubtless stimulate northwestern farm- 
ers to increased effort in wheat-raising. Should 
such a thing occur, they would probably demon- 
strate that even the last great crop could be ex- 
ceeded. 

After the civil war, the great western immigra- 
tion movement was renewed in earnest, and enor- 
mously increased. Kansas and Nebraska began 
their true development. Minnesota and the Da- 
kotas were filled with pioneer farmers. California 
learned in 1852 that gold could be profitably 
grown from the soil as well as discovered beneath 
it. Oregon and Washington fell into line as 
wheat-producing States. The work of the new 
agricultural sections began to show in the annual 
crop returns. The story of the discovery of the 
value of spring-wheat, and its elevation from its 
former despised position among cereals, has to do 
with milling, and will be told in another chapter. 
Beyond the great impetus it gave to wheat culti- 
vation, there were other important factors con- 
tributing to the nation's wealth in grain. The 
vast treeless plains of the west, supposed for a 
long time to be arid, were found worthy of culti- 
vation. The people of Kansas, Nebraska, and 
even Minnesota, had their early and desperate 
struggles with the grasshopper plague, but they 
found that the pest could be overcome. Kansas, 
raising nearly as much wheat in 1901 as the 
entire United States did in 1850, has answered 
the prophecies of the wise men of fifty years ago, 
who talked about the " great American desert " 
and the barrenness of the far west. Minnesota, 

L.ofC. 



IOO THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

with a wheat crop of 88 million bushels in 1901, 
has replied to the pessimists who a few genera- 
tions back predicted that her climate and soil 
were not adapted to wheat-raising. In 1901 27,- 
800,000 acres of land were devoted to winter-wheat 
culture and 20,894,000 acres to the growth of 
spring-wheat — a total area of more than 48 mil- 
lion acres, averaging a yield of 14.8 bushels to the 
acre. 

It should be explained that the wheat of the 
United States is the Triticum vulgare. This is 
divided into two sub-races, Triticu??i hibernum, 
winter-wheat, and Triticum ce.stivum, spring-wheat. 
These are again divided into many groups — bald 
and bearded, hard and soft, white and red, and 
subdivided into varieties according to the texture 
and colour of the kernel, and colour and quality of 
the straw, and other characteristics. Winter-wheat 
is sown in the autumn and harvested in the early 
summer ; spring-wheat is planted in the spring 
and harvested late in the summer and early au- 
tumn. It is needless to enumerate the climatic 
causes which work to the disadvantage of these 
two great rivals in the wheat kingdom ; drought, 
winter-killing, early frosts, and wet harvests — all 
have an important influence over the crop returns. 
Twenty-five States and Territories raise winter- 
wheat; nineteen produce spring-wheat, some States 
raise both. The leading crop-producers in the 
winter-wheat section are Kansas, California, Ohio, 
Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Okla- 
homa, Oregon, Michigan, Maryland, and Tennes- 
see. Of the spring-wheat list, Minnesota, North 
and South Dakota, Nebraska, Washington, Wis- 
consin, and Iowa are the most important. 

Wheat was first grown on the Pacific coast by 



102 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

the mission fathers, and a crude mill was built in 
1796. In 1800 a good crop was harvested. Six 
years later the first export shipment was made, 
and this went to Siberia. In 1847 Oregon raised 
180,000 bushels. From 1847 to 1852 the gold- 
fever raged, agriculture was neglected, and farms 
deserted; but after this excitement had somewhat 
spent itself, men found money in raising wheat, 
which was at that time almost as valuable as 
gold. California's crop in 1852 was 272,000 bush- 
els, and seed wheat sold at 12 cents a pound. In 
1854 the crop had increased to two million bush- 
els. This was the beginning of mill-building on 
the coast. In 1856 Oregon was a shipper of wheat 
to California. In the early '50s an export flour 
trade was begun with China, Mexico, Central 
America, the Pacific islands, and Great Britain. 
In 1867 the exports of coast wheat to Europe 
grew important. Oregon, and later Washington, 
began to rival California in the Oriental trade. 
While wheat from the Pacific coast has always 
found a ready sale in Europe, the flour from that 
section has never secured an important and per- 
manent position, the market in Britain for Amer- 
ican flour being principally confined to the grades 
exported from the mills of the central west and 
east. In 1888 California exported over 34 mil- 
lion bushels of wheat. It is notable that Pacific 
coast wheat finds but a limited demand in the 
central and eastern portions of the United States, 
and a movement of the crop towards Chicago is 
exceptional. During occasional periods of com- 
parative scarcity, attempts have been made to 
grind Pacific coast wheat in the great mills of the 
central west, but these have been unsuccessful, as 
the wheat does not produce the quality of flour 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 103 

which the trade of these mills demands and ex- 
pects. 

The great market for the surplus of the Pacific 
coast is in the Orient, China and Japan being im- 
portant customers, and to this market the millers 
of Oregon, California, and Washington are giving 
their chief attention, as the demand is for flour 
rather than wheat. Portions of China and Japan 
produce some wheat, and there are flour-mills 
there, but should the Asiatics become wheaten- 
bread eaters to any great extent, the native crops 
raised would be insufficient to supply their needs, 
and the Pacific coast millers would naturally expect 
to control this traffic. The tendency of China to- 
wards an increased consumption of flour is shown 
by the exports of the United States. In 1888 
362,000 barrels of flour were shipped to China; in 
1890 the exports were nearly 500,000 barrels; 
four years later the Chinese took over 600,000 
barrels; in 1895 over 800,000; from 1896 to 1898 
between -900,000 and one million barrels annually, 
and during the last four years the exports of flour 
to China have averaged nearly a million and a 
half barrels per annum. The growth of the Amer- 
ican flour trade in Japan has enormously increased. 
Fourteen years ago it amounted to some 27,000 
barrels; in 1891 it was over 75,000 barrels; four 
years later it reached 93,000 barrels; in 1897 it 
exceeded 230,000 barrels, and during the last four 
years it has averaged annually 320,000 barrels. 

Both the Japanese and Chinese are ambitious 
to do their own flour-milling, and thus overcome 
American competition ; but the success of their 
efforts in this direction is not yet assured. Amer- 
ican consuls have periodical attacks of future 
Japanese and Chinese flour-mill competition, and 



104 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

frequently dilate on the subject in their reports to 
the State Department ; but the practical American 
miller, familiar with methods and conditions, is 
able to see the weak spots in the Asiatic milling 
proposition, and the spectre of the Chinese miller 
does not terrify him. Instead, he makes his plans 
to increase his plant and extend his Asiatic trade 
further. In 1885 the first modern roller-mill was 
erected in Japan, an American mill-builder having 
constructed it by order of the Japanese Govern- 
ment. The mill was mechanically successful, but 
the native wheat was of such a mixed character 
that the flour at the best was but a feeble imita- 
tion of the American product. The dilatory, 
easy-going, slipshod methods of the Japanese 
mill operatives would have produced poor flour 
even if the w T heat had been good. 

In a recent American consular report the state- 
ment is made that the soil and climate of the 
northern island of the Japanese group are well 
adapted to the production of wheat and that " a 
big flour-making company had recently been 
started in that part of the empire. " The worthy 
consul explains further that it is now "turning 
out some 10 million pounds of flour annually, and 
the company hopes in time to prevent the impor- 
tation of American flour." The enormous prod- 
uct named is equivalent to the out-turn of an 
ordinary village mill in Minnesota of 125 barrels 
daily capacity, and therefore the excellent consul 
seems to be needlessly excited over Japan's new 
" big " mill which hopes " to prevent the importa- 
tion of American flour." 

A more formidable competitor is the plant of the 
Fou-Foong Flour Mills Company at Shanghai. 
This was built in 1900 by an American mill-building 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 105 

company for a Chinese corporation ; its superin- 
tendent is an American, and it has a daily capacity 
of 300 barrels. While some wheat of an indifferent 
character is grown in China, the owners of the 
Shanghai mill expect to be able to make their flour 
from imported wheat, and should their first mill 
prove successful, they intend to construct others 
in different cities throughout the empire. Doubt- 
less Chinese millers would have quite an advan- 
tage over their American competitors in knowl- 
edge of the customs, habits, and prejudices of the 
people, but it is doubtful if a 300-barrel mill in 
China could produce flour as cheap as a mill ten 
times its size in California. It is true that, every- 
thing else being equal, a mill which depends for 
its raw material on a crop grown out of the coun- 
try and imported, is at a great disadvantage com- 
pared with the mill situated at or near the base of 
supplies. This has been practically demonstrated 
so often that it has become almost a milling 
axiom, the few exceptions merely proving the 
rule. 

The erection of a few Chinese and Japanese 
flour-mills are rather an indication of the perma- 
nency and increase of wheat flour as a food 
among the Asiatics, than a serious menace to 
American competition. The exports of flour to 
China and Japan are not in themselves very im- 
portant ; but if they are significant of a change in 
the food of the people they are full of meaning. 
Mr. James J. Hill, the great northwestern railway 
owner and operator, whose wonderful foresight in 
industrial development has been demonstrated by 
practical results, and who has backed his judg- 
ment with the successful investment of enormous 
sums of money, believes than in the Orient will be 



106 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

found a very large market for American flour, and 
that its development is merely a matter of time. 
In his scheme of railway and steamship building 
he evidently has this traffic in mind, and he has 
said that 500 millions of people in China will, he 
believes, become wheaten-bread eaters, 

Singularly enough, the Pacific coast miller is 
sceptical as to the possibilities of the Oriental 
flour trade, or he affects scepticism of it in his 
public utterances on the subject. This despite the 
extraordinary growth of the Chinese export flour 
trade. It is possible that he assumes this position 
in order to quiet the ambitions of his competitor 
in the northwestern States, who is ever alert to 
discover new markets for his flour. Thus far the 
Pacific coast miller has had the control of the 
American flour trade in China and Japan, but he 
has not shown the same zeal and enterprise in 
exploiting it as the northwestern millers displayed 
in building up their European business. Should 
recent attempts at forming a trust of the Pacific 
coast mills succeed, the millers in the Mississippi 
valley will undoubtedly take a hand in the Orien- 
tal trade. Nothing builds up an export trade like 
keen competition. It may be hard upon the indi- 
vidual, but it is beneficial to the nation as a 
whole. Attrition in prices stimulates and extends 
a demand and forces a market where none existed 
before. 

In this instance the great transcontinental 
railway lines controlled by Mr. Hill and his asso- 
ciates, and connected with steamship lines simi- 
larly controlled, will have every incentive to en- 
courage, by exceedingly low rates of freight, the 
hauling of the flour for the Asiatic market from 
the middle west. At present these railway lines 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 107 

gain but little by the existence of the Chinese 
flour market. If the freight originated in the 
northwest, they would not only get the long haul 
across the continent by rail, but would thereby 
secure cargoes for the immense ships which Mr. 
Hill is building for the Oriental trade. He him- 
self has said that, given the demand in one place 
and the supply in another, the carrier can and 
must make a rate of freight which will move the 
commodity, and, providing the traffic is great 
enough, this rate can be reduced below any 
figures to-day existing. If Asia indeed be a de- 
veloping flour market — if her people are becom- 
ing bread-eaters — their demands will be enormous. 
The supply to meet it will be found in the north- 
ern part of the Mississippi valley, and Mr. Hill is 
evidently preparing to furnish the connecting 
link. To many observers of this interesting situ- 
ation, the position of the Pacific coast millers in 
regard to the Oriental flour market is similar to 
that of the Atlantic coast millers when the Euro- 
pean export flour trade was created. Previous to 
this time, the millers of the Atlantic coast had 
done some exporting, but it was only when the 
large mills of the middle west, forced to find a 
market abroad for their flour, entered the field 
that the traffic began to expand in earnest, and 
the present very important European export trade 
was established. 

The beginning of the twentieth century finds 
the United States far in the lead as a producer of 
wheat and flour. Its farming methods are the 
most advanced and approved, and the man behind 
the machine is the most intelligent wheat-raiser 
in the world ; his Canadian brother is his only 
equal ; both read and think. The excellent agri- 



108 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

cultural colleges established, with the assistance 
of the national Government, in various States are 
doing magnificent work in keeping up the stand- 
ards of wheat culture; in experimenting with new 
varieties, and determining their value as to qual- 
ity and yield ; in educating the rising generation 
of farmers to cultivate the soil scientifically and 
successfully ; in teaching young women to be- 
come proficient housekeepers, and fitting them 
for their work in life as farmers' wives and daugh- 
ters. The American farming implements are 
models for the rest of the world, and can be seen 
in the wheat-fields of every land where wheat is 
successfully grown. 

The American elevator systems, whereby the 
product of the wheat-fields is cared for until re- 
quired by the world for grinding, are elaborate 
and cover every section in which wheat is grown. 
Terminal elevators of enormous capacity are sit- 
uated in the great centres of distribution and 
points of export. These elevators are of dis- 
tinctively American construction, economical in 
cost, yet models for effectiveness and utility. 
They mark a complete departure from European 
methods of elevator-building and are the result of 
practical experience in the handling and storage 
of wheat. The wooden structures once used for 
this purpose are being rapidly replaced by eleva- 
tors of steel, concrete, or tile, which being fire- 
proof accomplish a large saving in insurance. 

The modern mills of the United States will be 
described in another chapter, and the subject of 
transportation will also be reserved for subse- 
quent and separate consideration. In brief, the 
flour-mills of this nation in size and equipment 
are unrivalled, and the rail transportation facili- 



IIO THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

ties, in extent, in cheapness, and in the complete- 
ness with which they cover the wheat-growing 
sections, are incomparably the best in the world. 
In the United States, therefore, at the present 
time, King Wheat thrives under favouring condi- 
tions such as he has known in no other land. 
From planting to harvesting ; from the field to 
the elevator ; from store-house to mill, and from 
mill to market — the wheat berry is given every 
advantage that the skill, knowledge, and experi- 
ence of man can devise; all moving in a syste- 
matic, co-ordinate scheme, the intent and object of 
which is to give the masses of the world the very 
best possible food at the very lowest possible cost. 
Under such conditions, let us consider what 
this favoured nation does for itself and the world 
at large in the way of wheat supplies. As already 
stated, the wheat crop of the United States in 
1901 was 721 million bushels. The per capita 
consumption is estimated at 4.53 bushels. The 
exports of wheat for the twelve months ending 
June, 1902, were nearly 155 million bushels; the 
exports of flour nearly 18 million barrels. The 
principal countries which took wheat from the 
United States, in their order as to quantity, were 
the United Kingdom, Germany, British North 
America, Africa, and France. The principal buyers 
of flour were, the United Kingdom, Holland, Ger- 
many, China, Cuba and the West Indies, Brazil, 
Japan, and Africa. The total value of the exports 
of wheat and flour exceeded $178,000,000. Pre- 
vious to 1872, the largest crop of wheat raised in 
the United States did not equal the amount ex- 
ported thirty years later. 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT III 



CHAPTER IX 

The wheat-fields of to-morrow — The Canadian north- 
west and its amazing crops — The effect of opening the 
new fields — Political and industrial changes resulting 
therefrom in Canada and the United States — The be- 
ginning of the end of ultra-protection — The future 
wheat-growing possibilities of the new northwest — 
Birth of a new producing nation 

In the territory belonging to the United States 
lie the world's greatest wheat-fields of the present 
day ; but the demands of the world's stomach are 
appalling in the matter of bread, and in order 
that they may be supplied and that none of the 
earth's inhabitants need go hungry, King Wheat 
must ever be extending his dominion and finding 
new lands to conquer. Just as the wise men of 
the old world had made up their minds that the 
limit of wheat-raising on the western continent, 
which they had been continually croaking about 
for half a century, had at last actually been reached ; 
that thenceforth the agriculturist would mark 
time in the growing of wheat and the consumer 
be obliged to look about him for a substitute for 
his favourite food, there occurred a development 
and expansion in the wheat-producing area, which 
was so surprising and unexpected that it not only 
upset all calculations of the prophets, but ex- 
ceeded the expectations of those most directly 
concerned, the people on the spot who were en- 
gaged in wheat-raising. This astonishing phe- 
nomenon opened to the view possibilities which 
are as yet only partially comprehended, even by 
the specialists, and affords at least reasonable 



112 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

hypothesis for the belief that the supremacy of 
the United States as the wprld's granary will in 
the near future be overthrown, and that to west- 
ern Canada will belong the honour of being the 
chief province of the King of Cereals. 

Eastern Canada had raised wheat crops of 
more or less importance for many years, but 
neither the total amount produced, the yield per 
acre, nor the quality of the berry was such as to 
disturb the equilibrium of the world's markets. 
Canada was conservative in the growth of her 
agriculture, her immigrants being largely of a 
class different from that of the American north- 
west, which did not take kindly to the drudgery 
of raising wheat in a new and thinly settled coun- 
try. Ontario and Manitoba were the chief wheat 
provinces. In the former, winter and spring 
wheat were raised ; in the latter, spring-wheat 
exclusively. In 1896 Canada's wheat crop was 
about 36 million bushels; the three following 
years it averaged less than 60 million bushels, 
while in 1900 it was but 40 millions. Suddenly, 
in 1901, it rose to more than 84 million bushels, 
and as over 63 millions of this quantity were the 
product of Manitoba and the Northwest Terri- 
tories, the world was startled into realizing that 
a new and great wheat-field had come into exist- 
ence. 

The wheat crop of western Canada for 1901 
was phenomenal. The highest number of acres 
heretofore cropped had been something over six- 
teen hundred thousand in 1899, but in July, 1901, 
it was known that over two million acres were 
under cultivation and that the prospects for a 
great yield were most promising. The autumnal 
crop in its realization exceeded the estimates of 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 1 13 

the most optimistic, both in yield and quality. 
Western Canada produced from a little over 2\ 
million acres a wheat crop of 63,425,000 bushels, 
or an average yield of 25 bushels to the acre — 
the greatest ever grown on unfertilized land in 
the world's history. Not only was the yield 
enormous, but the quality of the wheat produced 
was superb. It was the ideal spring-wheat of the 
variety prized by flour-makers the world over for 
its superior strength ; of great value for blending 
with wheat of lower grades in order to produce a 
desirable milling mixture. 

When the truth regarding this achievement 
became known, it created a profound sensation 
among those who were concerned in the problem 
of the world's food supply. It was not that the 
crop in itself was so enormous, for Minnesota 
alone raised %% million bushels that year, and the 
crop of North Dakota exceeded that of western 
Canada by 13 million bushels. The significance 
of the returns was in the phenomenal yield. 
This, taken in connection with the fact, which 
was known, that only a trifle of the cultivatable 
land of western Canada had been tilled, made it 
apparent that, if this great area was to be opened 
up to wheat culture and would yield even approx- 
imately what it produced in 1901, the spring-wheat 
States on the American side of the line might 
well look to their laurels. 

The inhabitants of North and South Dakota 
and Minnesota were not unmindful of the ability 
of their Canadian neighbours to rival them in the 
quality and yield of their fields. For ten years 
the average yield of Manitoba had been nearly 
twenty bushels to the acre. Even in 1900, when 
in many portions of the United States the crop 
8 



114 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

was a failure, Manitoba averaged ten bushels to 
the acre. In 1899 and 1900 some of the shrewder 
and more far-seeing of the American farmers in 
Minnesota and the Dakotas had quietly crossed 
the line and bought farms in Manitoba. But, 
although something was known of western Cana- 
da's possibilities, the x\mericans counted upon the 
traditional conservatism of the farmers of the 
Dominion, and were totally unprepared for the 
practical demonstration made by the crop of 
1901. 

A glance at the map of western Canada will 
give some idea of the tremendous area comprised 
in Manitoba, Assiniboia, Saskatchewan, and Al- 
berta. This vast empire lies north and west of 
those northwestern American States which are 
world famous for the quality and extent of their 
wheat crops. A thousand or twelve hundred miles 
north of the American boundary, in the Peace 
River valley, wheat of superior quality is grown. 
How much farther north and west it may be 
successfully cultivated is still to be accurately 
determined by practical experiment. The State 
of North Dakota, its sister State of South Dakota, 
and its great wheat-producing neighbour, Minne- 
sota, might all be easily placed, without crowding, 
within the limits of Saskatchewan, Assiniboia, and 
part of Alberta. This would still leave Manitoba 
out of the calculation. It is estimated that Mani- 
toba has 25 million acres of land suitable for culti- 
vation ; less than one-eighth of it is now being 
tilled. The total area of this province equals that 
of England and Scotland combined. In 1901 As- 
siniboia planted less than 400,000 acres in wheat, 
and reaped a harvest of 10 million bushels, averag- 
ing 26 bushels to the acre. Saskatchewan, still far- 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 1 15 

ther north, raised more than 800,000 bushels from 
only 37,000 acres, averaging about 26 bushels. 
Alberta, stretching westward from these territo- 
ries, put only 40,000 acres in wheat, and in return 
gathered a crop of 980,000 bushels. In portions 
of Assiniboia phenomenal yields were grown ; 
many farmers, it was reported, made 49, 52, 53, 




An American Elevator Town. 

and one 60 bushels to the acre. It was the con- 
templation of such returns as these and the enor- 
mous area still to be developed, rather than the 
crop itself, which startled the farmers, millers, 
elevator-owners, wheat-dealers, and flour-sellers in 
the United States and abroad. 

By many the Canadian crop of 1901 was re- 
garded as exceptional, and these expressed the 
belief that " one swallow did not make a summer," 
and that the excitement of the wheat-growing pos- 
sibilities of the Canadian northwest was a mere 
" boom " not likely to be permanent. This opin- 
ion was not shared by those who had travelled 



Il6 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

through the territory and were familiar with its 
soil and climatic conditions. Further, the wheat 
crop of 1902 demonstrated that the former year's 
success was not sporadic. Manitoba's crop again 
broke the record, being 53 million bushels, with a 
yield of 26 bushels to the acre. The Northwest 
Territory, including Assiniboia, Saskatchewan, and 
Alberta, produced nearly 15 million bushels, with 
a yield about the same as the year before. With 
these results before them the doubting Thomases 
of the wheat trade are left dazed and amazed at 
the magnitude of the new dominions which King 
Wheat is conquering, and the consumers of bread 
are reassured as to the future of their supplies. 

Remarkable effects are following the discovery 
and development of this new wheat country; so 
far-reaching are they that it is impossible to esti- 
mate their ultimate influence. The average yield 
of wheat in the United States, it will be remem- 
bered, was only 14.8 bushels in 1901 ; in 1902 it 
was 14.4 bushels. Comparison with the yield in 
western Canada set the farmer in the United 
States thinking, and his thoughts logically moved 
him to act. In many western States the yield 
was even less than the average. Land had be- 
come expensive in America, and it was cheap in 
western Canada. The enterprising agriculturist 
in the United States was not slow to see his op- 
portunity. 

Farmers in such States as Missouri, Iowa, and 
Illinois, comparatively remote from the new fields, 
have bought land in western Canada. In increas- 
ing numbers the shrewd wheat-growers of Minne- 
sota and the Dakotas have crossed the border and 
purchased farms in the Dominion. In 1900 and 
1901 the country banks of the middle western and 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 117 

northwestern States were full of money — the de- 
posits of prosperous farmers who had realized good 
profits from the sale of their crops. These banks 
actually found it difficult to loan their surplus funds. 
Farmers had paid off their mortgages and were 
depositors, not borrowers. Country banks, in 
turn, heaped up balances in the local money cen- 
tres, such as Minneapolis and Kansas City. The 
banks of these cities were obliged to go east and 
even abroad in order to loan their money to ad- 
vantage. Bonds of foreign countries were com- 
mon investments in these institutions, which but 
a few years previous were obliged to borrow 
millions of dollars from eastern and Canadian 
banks in order to finance the northwestern crops. 
With the opening of the new fields to the north 
the western farmers withdrew their balances from 
their local banks and even borrowed money with 
which to purchase farms in western Canada. Land 
companies were formed in the United States which 
bought hundreds of thousands of acres in Sas- 
katchewan and Assiniboia. These were surveyed, 
divided, exploited, and sold to agriculturists seek- 
ing new homes across the border. Groups of 
neighbours in the States moved together in the 
purchase of Canadian lands, and the younger 
farmers went north to develop them. The imme- 
diate result of this movement was a very large 
reduction in the cash balances of country banks, 
a tightening of the local money markets, and 
a consequent effect upon banks in the larger 
western cities. These in turn called in their 
eastern loans, and this doubtless contributed 
materially to the somewhat marked stringency 
in the money markets of the eastern American 
cities, which ruled during the latter part of 1902. 



Il8 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

How much further this may be felt is still to be 
learned. 

Immigration is pouring into western Canada 
as a result of its phenomenal wheat crops of 
i9oi-'o2. The official figures issued by the Do- 
minion Government show that, in 1901, 37,595 im- 
migrants registered in Winnipeg. For the ten 
months ending October, 1902, 64,075 arrivals regis- 
tered there. It is estimated that during 1902 fully 
100,000 immigrants arrived in the Canadian north- 
west to become permanent residents. The regis- 
tration figures quoted do not show the total ar- 
rivals. At least 25 per cent of the immigrants were 
of the independent class, and not requiring either 
assistance or advice from the department did not 
register. Of the 64,000 who registered, 24,000 
were from the United States. The value of the 
effects imported by the settlers gives a clearer 
idea of the extent to which the farmers of the 
United States are turning northward in search of 
new fields. In 1902 the total valuation of these 
effects were $4,580,000, of which $3,751,000 were 
imported by settlers from the United States, and 
but $802,000 by those from Great Britain. The 
homestead entries in western Canada during the 
fiscal year ending June 30, 1896, were but 1,857 ; 
for the same period in 1902 they were 14,832. 
This indicates what wheat will do in the opening 
up and development of a new country. 

The financial effect of the discovery of new 
wheat lands, in withdrawing capital from one 
country and investing it in another, is but one of 
the many interesting phenomena connected with 
this new and very important development. If 
the exodus of American farmers continues, and 
it probably will, more lasting and important po- 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 



II 9 



litical and industrial results will follow. Both Can- 
ada and the United States are at present enjoy- 
ing the doubtful blessings of a protective tariff. 
Without entering in detail into the vexed question 
of the tariff relations between these neighbouring 




A Steel Tank Elevator, America. 

countries, which is a long story, its history, in 
brief, is a game of political see-saw. They have 
never been able to come together on a mutually 
satisfactory tariff. When the United States is up 
in the air on a high-tariff policy, Canada is usually 
down near the ground with a moderate policy. 
Should the United States incline towards a tariff- 
for-revenue-only basis, Canada is off on a wave 
of ultra-protection. It is unfortunate that this 
should be so, because both countries would be 
benefited by an interchange of commodities on 
the basis of a moderate tariff. The game of po- 
litical tag has gone on for many years, but is ap- 



120 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

parently no nearer conclusion now than when it 
began. It is due to the Dominion to say that it 
has earnestly tried to secure reciprocal trade rela- 
tions with the United States in the past, but when 
its commissioners arrived in Washington seeking 
to promote fairer trade relations, the dominant 
party in the United States was committed to a 
policy of ultra-protection and the Canadian over- 
tures were politely but firmly rejected. The in- 
creased tariff against the United States, which 
followed these fruitless efforts, was in the nature 
of retaliation, and since all attempts at securing a 
reduction of the tariff on Canadian goods had 
failed, the Dominion was scarcely to be blamed 
for turning away from her unresponsive neighbour 
and seeking favourable trade connections else- 
where. 

The development of western Canada, the move- 
ment of farmers from the United States to the 
newly opened wheat-fields, and the large invest- 
ments of American capital in the Dominion, are 
creating a change in sentiment on the tariff ques- 
tion which will doubtless have a pronounced effect 
upon the future political course of both countries. 
The natural channel along which trade relations 
should develop runs north and south. Western 
Canada, were it not for the tariff barrier built be- 
tween the two countries, would find a ready mar- 
ket close at hand for her agricultural products. 
Lines of communication exist from Manitoba 
and the Northwest Territories to Minneapolis, 
which, with its innumerable outlets by lake and 
rail to the south and east, created in response to 
the wonderful growth of the American northwest, 
is in reality the gateway to the markets of the 
world. If Canadian wheat and flour and other 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 121 

products were permitted access to the United 
States free of tariff, they would find an immediate 
and profitable primary market, and they would 
also secure advantage of the railway systems 
already in existence which are now taking the 
products of the northwest to the Atlantic seaboard, 
and thence, with the choice of many ports, to the 
old world, at the lowest possible rate of freight. 
Instead of enjoying these facilities, ready at hand, 
the products of western Canada are forced to 
find an outlet to the world over practically one 
railroad, which enjoys a monopoly of entry into 
the new fields, and, in the summer season, by the 
Great Lakes, keeping within Canadian waters and 
using only Canadian ports. These facilities are 
utterly inadequate to handle such crops as those 
raised in i9oi-'o2, and consequently there has 
existed congestion and delay in moving the wheat, 
the resultant expense necessarily coming out of 
the wheat-growers' pockets in the end. 

A duty of twenty-five cents a bushel on wheat 
prohibits the entry of any portion of the Canadian 
crop into the United States, and shuts out the 
Dominion farmer from participation in the bene- 
fits enjoyed by the agriculturist across the border. 
Even if this duty were removed, it is questionable 
if the dominant railway would permit any large 
movement of the crop towards the south, because 
it desires to secure the " long haul " eastward 
from the wheat-fields to the Canadian seaboard 
over its own road-bed, thereby obtaining for itself 
the entire revenue in freight which the crop affords. 
Eastern Canada would support the railway in this 
endeavour because it would naturally prefer to con- 
trol the traffic and keep it within Canadian chan- 
nels until it went abroad. Eastern Canada and the 



122 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

existing railway monopoly would therefore resent 
a movement towards reciprocal trade relations, the 
result of which would be to divert any portion of 
the grain wealth of the new northwest towards the 
United States. Hence, so far as these interests 
are concerned — and they are now able to control 
the policy of the Government — Canada is further 
from lowering the existing tariff-wall than she has 
been for many years. On the other hand, north- 
west Canada, growing enormous crops and anxious 
to secure easy and cheap ways to market, looks 
longingly across the line and frets at the tariff 
barrier built by political hands which shuts her 
out from the promised land. This smouldering 
sentiment may be fanned into a future flame by 
the large number of American farmers who are set- 
tling in the Canadian west. These are not accus- 
tomed to having their crops at the mercy of one 
railroad. The country they removed from is grid- 
ironed with rails, and although recent combina- 
tions and mergers have somewhat reduced and 
regulated competition, still the rate of freight 
from the wheat-field to the market is exceedingly 
low and there exists no lack of facilities with 
which to handle the crop when it is harvested; 
indeed the American farmer is exceptionally fa- 
voured in this regard. These settlers will soon 
insist on a change in tariffs and traffic arrange- 
ments, and will clamour for access to the market 
which is in geographical propinquity to them re- 
gardless of political walls. The influence of the 
Canadian northwest upon the future tariff policy 
of the Dominion is a factor which within a few 
years must be reckoned with. It will be strange, 
also, if the settlement of this new land by so large 
a number of farmers from the United States, 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 1 23 

schooled in republican principles and entirely out 
of sympathy with British traditions and institu- 
tions, does not have a tendency to undermine, or 
at least relax, that spirit of loyalty to England 
which has hitherto characterized the Dominion. 
This, however, is a speculation in the domain of 
higher politics which is rather beside the question. 
It is true that western Canada as a whole looks 
favourably towards closer commercial, if not po- 
litical, relations with the United States, although, 
the country being so new T ly settled, such a senti- 
ment has not as yet had time to crystallize into 
formulated expression. 

There can be no question as to the effect the 
opening of this new and fertile section has had 
upon tariff sentiment in the United States, and 
particularly in the northwestern section thereof. 
For some years the people of the middle west 
have, unknown to the politicians, been changing 
their opinion as to the sacredness of the protec- 
tion idol. ■ Coming mainly from the east, they 
brought with them their ingrained and inherited 
belief that the greatness of the nation was due 
very largely to the policy of high protection. 
For years they have been stanch protectionists, 
but gradually at first, and latterly very rapidly, 
their convictions have been changing. The peo- 
ple of this section have been obliged in a very 
large degree to seek foreign markets for their 
products, and in so doing have found the exten- 
sion of their trade handicapped by the prejudice 
against the United States caused by its high pro- 
tective policy. In many instances they have suf- 
fered vicarious atonement for the greed of others, 
and, in return for the protection given favoured 
eastern industries, they have been punished by 



124 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

having their products barred out of certain for- 
eign countries by the imposition of retaliatory 
tariffs. Agriculturists have become restive un- 
der a policy which compels them to pay a pro- 
tected price to fostered " infant industries " for 
articles they wear or use, and affords them no 
assistance in selling their products abroad. West- 
ern manufacturers seeking foreign markets find 
no help in the national protective policy. The 
growth of the trust and its increasing power is 
commonly believed to be the result of ultra-pro- 
tection, and the western consumer is convinced 
that the abolition of the tariff on trust-controlled 
commodities would relieve the country of the 
pinch of monopolies which is increasingly felt. 

" Lower the tariff " has been the whisper of 
the central west for some years ; latterly it is 
growing into a clamour, but still the sound of it 
has not reached Washington. The mildest form 
taken by this spreading conviction is a belief in 
reciprocity, and the feeling in its favour is practi- 
cally unanimous in the middle west. Still, Wash- 
ington ignores the rising storm, and all attempts 
to negotiate reciprocal treaties with foreign coun- 
tries have failed. This simply intensifies the in- 
creasing dissatisfaction with the existing tariff. 
In no other section of the United States was the 
last speech of President McKinley, with its strong 
fair-trade sentiment, received with such genuine 
satisfaction as in the middle west and northwest. 
The wise suggestions therein contained have been 
ignored by the dominant party, however, and no 
move has been made either towards a modification 
of the tariff or the arrangement of reciprocal trade 
relations. With the advent of western Canada 
as a great wheat-producer, the northwest realized 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 1 25 

that the existence of the tariff wall between the 
two countries threatened the loss of a great op- 
portunity for commercial expansion, and became 
more insistent than before for the abolition of 
the absurd and unnecessary barrier which keeps 
two natural customers apart. 

It is true that the duty of twenty-five cents a 
bushel prevents Canadian wheat from crossing 
the line and therefore theoretically protects the 
American farmer. Some years ago he would have 




Terminal Elevators, America. 

believed that it actually protected him, but he 
has grown sceptical of the tariff idol and is in- 
clined to examine him more closely under the 
impression that he is stuffed with straw. The 
American farmer is no longer an unlettered rustic 
who follows his crop only as far as the nearest 
railway station. He has discovered that a tariff 
which keeps Canadian wheat out of the United 
States, but is powerless to keep it out of Liver- 
pool, is no protection whatever. He has learned 
that Britain makes the price of his wheat. If, 



126 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

therefore, the Canadian crop reaches the foreign 
market through Canadian channels, and not by 
way of the United States, it depreciates the value 
of American wheat quite as much or more than 
it would if it came into direct contact with the 
wheat of the United States. The farmer knows 
further that the wheat grown in the Canadian 
northwest has certain attributes lacking in his 
own grain. If this wheat be received freely in 
the United States, and ground by the mills into 
flour, the farmer is aware that these attributes 
will blend perfectly with those of his own wheat, 
and therefore that the Canadian product thus 
handled will assist in marketing his own abroad. 
Examined thus closely, the twenty-five cent duty 
on wheat which was created in order to make the 
farmer think he was being protected, becomes a 
mere farce. Instead of a benefit it is actually a 
detriment to his development and prosperity. 

The spring-wheat miller would naturally wel- 
come Canadian wheat if he could obtain it free of 
duty. The quality of wheat produced in the 
newly settled country is just what he needs and 
wants to strengthen and improve his flour. Grad- 
ually, as the northwestern States have become 
cultivated, the original hard wheat has grown 
scarcer. Wheat raised on virgin lands has a pe- 
culiar strength lacking in that produced in older 
fields. It is capable of improving the character 
of other wheats blended with it when the mixture 
is made into flour. These mills have the capacity 
to grind the Canadian crop, and could greatly in- 
crease their export trade if they could secure a 
share of it. Without it, they feel that their future 
is limited, particularly if the wheat of western 
Canada finds its way unground to mills in the 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 1 27 

United Kingdom. The elevator, banking, grain- 
buying, exporting, indeed all the commercial 
interests of the American northwest would be 
benefited by the receipt of a portion of the great 
Canadian crops, but a duty of twenty-five cents 
a bushel kills all hope of obtaining it. Reciproc- 
ity, low tariff, and, indeed, absolute free trade, are 
principles which, in view of this escaping oppor- 
tunity, are growing in popularity throughout the 
northwestern portion of the United States at a 
rate of which eastern statesmen have no concep- 
tion, and even western politicians but dimly com- 
prehend. 

On both sides of the line which divides north- 
western Canada from the northwestern States, the 
discovery and exploitation of the new fields of 
wheat are rapidly changing men's minds politi- 
cally, and drawn by their mutual needs, the farmer 
on one side and the buyer on the other are get- 
ting beyond the control of party leadership and 
are seeking to change the tariff of their respective 
countries. It is doubtful if any legislation can be 
effected either in Canada or the United States 
which will satisfy the demands of these elements, 
and still leave otherwise intact the tariff struc- 
ture. If free wheat is obtained, a complete revi- 
sion of the tariff will probably accompany it. 
Such a result may indeed follow the present agi- 
tation, and if it should, the credit for the removal 
or lowering of the tariff walls must be given to 
King Wheat, who has always been an enemy to 
all human laws which are designed to keep man- 
kind from securing its full and free supply of 
bread. 

Industrially, the development of the new wheat- 
fields will have a marked effect upon at least three 



128 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

countries. The tariff will influence this materially. 
If it is to stand, American manufacturers of farm- 
ing machinery and implements will build plants in 
Canada. This they will be obliged to do in order 
to avoid paying the Canadian duty on their prod- 
ucts if shipped from the United States. Many of 
them have already adopted this policy. The 
amount of railway building in Canada must nec- 
essarily be great in order to cover the vast terri- 
tory being opened up to cultivation. The lake 
route will need more vessels to carry the wheat 
eastward. Elevators and store-houses must be 
erected to handle the crop, and a great impetus 
will be given to the building of flour-mills in Can- 
ada. Should this wheat find no outlet through 
the United States, because of the duty, then vast 
quantities must necessarily go abroad to be 
ground, into the markets of Great Britain and the 
Continent, for the milling capacity of Canada is 
not large enough to absorb the crop. Exported 
as wheat and not flour, the crop of the Canadian 
northwest will prove a boon to the flour-mills of 
the United Kingdom. For many years these have 
been harassed by the competition of American 
millers; but if they are able in the future to se- 
cure sufficient quantities of cheap Canadian 
wheat, they can produce a flour which for price 
and quality can defy transatlantic competition, 
and a revival of British flour-milling, which has 
not been a flourishing industry for some twenty 
years, will doubtless follow ; with a correspond- 
ing decline in the American export flour trade. 

The Canadians themselves are exceedingly 
sanguine as to the future. In a recent interview 
a Manitoba official, in speaking of the productive 
capacity of the Canadian northwest, said he ex- 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 1 29 

pected that, within the next ten years, 10 mil- 
lion acres in Manitoba would be under cultiva- 
tion. Assuming a similar increase of acreage in 
the territories, he estimated that a decade hence 
northwestern Canada would produce 350 million 
bushels of wheat. This estimate was on a basis of 
only a little over 20 million of the 75 million 
acres which it is claimed are susceptible of culti- 
vation. He believed that, when the full possibil- 
ities of this vast area are achieved, the produc- 
tion of wheat will exceed a billion bushels. This 
would be one-third larger than the greatest crop 
ever raised in the United States. Americans re- 
gard these prophecies as absurd exaggerations, 
and even some conservative millers in the Cana- 
dian northwest, who are in a position to make 
careful and practical estimates of the future yield 
of the fields upon which they must depend for their 
supply of raw material, smile when such figures 
are mentioned. They contend that a very large 
portion of the so-called arable land in northwest 
Canada is utterly unfit for wheat-raising, and is 
being exploited for speculative purposes. While 
admitting that this section is capable of growing 
large crops of excellent wheat, they distrust the 
official returns and question the accuracy of the 
reported yields. In their opinion both the railway 
and the Government officials are inclined to exag- 
gerate and overstate the facts in order to stimu- 
late emigration and the investment of capital. In 
the matter of inducing immigrants, by jugglery of 
figures, to purchase and settle upon newly opened 
lands, the Canadians are no better than their 
cousins across the border. Indeed in the business 
of importing and fleecing that perennial victim, the 
British younger son, who has a small capital to in- 
9 



130 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

vest in wheat-farming and is looking for an oppor- 
tunity, the Canadians far surpass the Americans. 
They have superior advantages in this industry 
because they understand the conditions in Eng- 
land better, and can more easily secure the confi- 
dence of the investor, being related to him by the 
ties of a common country. In the end the victim 
perishes the same whether he takes his patrimony 
north or south of the boundary line. Doubtless, 
as is common in newly discovered lands, there is 
more or less trickery and exaggeration in the re- 
turns published, and the great danger from early 
frosts — the result of which is to make the wheat 
touched absolutely worthless for milling purposes 
— is carefully suppressed ; but taking all this into 
consideration, beyond all doubt vast crops of 
wheat, sufficient to contribute materially towards 
the prevention of scarcity, are going to be reaped 
in this new and hitherto undeveloped section of 
the world. 

A discovery of a new wheat-producing area, 
such as northwestern Canada, is really more im- 
portant to the world than the discovery of gold. 
A few of the possible results have been suggested 
in this chapter, but they are merely fragmentary. 
A new nation is coming into existence, and its 
object will be to feed older countries which are no 
longer self-supporting. In what measure it will 
succeed ; how great a factor Manitoba and the 
Northwest Territories are to become in the world's 
food supply, can only be surmised. The pioneer 
farmers will have their difficulties to overcome as 
the farmers of Minnesota and the Dakotas had — 
there is the danger of early frosts to which they 
are exceptionally exposed and which has affected 
their last crop to a considerable degree — but when 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 131 

all is said and due allowance is made for dangers 
and exaggerations, there is warrant for believing 
that the great wheat-fields of to-morrow lie in 
Manitoba and the Northwest Territories, and that 
once again Nature has postponed indefinitely 
that evil day when man will be able to see the 
limit to the growth of wheat. 



CHAPTER X 

The milling of wheat — Earliest methods — The saddle- 
stone, the mortar, and the quern — The feudal law of 
milling soke — Slave and cattle power — Water-mills 
and wind-mills — The use of steam power — Milling 
processes in 1799 

To properly tell the story of milling, its devel- 
opment from the rude processes of ancient times 
to its present fine mechanical perfection, its 
growth from the primitive mill of the middle 
ages to the modern roller-mill capable of pro- 
ducing in a single day enough flour to feed a 
small city for an entire year, would require vol- 
umes. It has a history full of incident ; it has its 
own romance and its own tragedy ; its course has 
affected the policy of nations; it has had a bear- 
ing upon important political events, and great 
industrial battles have been and still are being 
fought by those engaged in it. Its achievements 
are the story of man's endeavour towards indus- 
trial perfection, the production of the most and 
best at the least cost. Its discoveries have led 
to the extension of civilization into new regions 
and the utilization of certain of the earth's prod- 
ucts at one time supposed to be comparatively 



132 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 



valueless. It has served the painter, the song- 
writer, and the poet. It has furnished a back- 
ground for the maker of fiction, and it has a very 

respectable, if frag- 
mentary, literature 
of its own. Since 
it became a distinct 
trade the making 
of flour has always 
been esteemed an 
honourable occupa- 
tion, and the miller 
has occupied an 
unique position in 
history because 
t of his tradition- 
I al sturdinessand 
independence of 
character. A fa- 
vourite theme 
with writers of 
all ages has been 
the miller and 
his mill, and it 
is still deservedly popular, although the mill is no 
longer picturesque, and the miller, from being a 
mere rustic whose stout maintenance of his rights 
and more than average intelligence lifted him 
above the farmers whose grist he ground, has 
become a great merchant and man of affairs. 

While it would be impossible to narrate the 
history of this noble and important industry 
within the limits of this work, it would be 
equally impossible to tell the story of a grain 
of wheat without devoting some part of it to 
milling, for were it not for the work of the 




Feudal Mill, Bagatz, France. 
Erected 1316. 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 133 

miller, that of the wheat-raiser would be useless. 
The ultimate value of a crop lies in the worth of 
the wheat to the miller when he has transformed 
it into flour. This is a simple and self-evident 
proposition, it would seem, and yet it is one which 
many ambitious speculators have overlooked in 
their efforts to put the price of wheat beyond its 
legitimate value, and have later discovered to be 
the true cause of their undoing. Since this is true, 
it is necessary, in order to understand rightly the 
story of wheat, to have some understanding of 
the story of milling, and in this chapter and the 
next the principal points in the history of its 
growth will be briefly stated. 

Primeval man reduced grain to flour by means 
of a hand-stone. For four thousand years this was 
the only form of mill in use. The grain was placed 
in a hollow stone and pounded into meal by means 
of a stone-crusher. Aboriginals in all countries 
used this simple process of milling. In the pre- 
historic Swiss lake dwellings crushers were in 
ordinary use. The first grinding-mill was the 
saddle-stone. This marked the initial stage in 
the development of milling processes. It has 
been used throughout the world. The Greeks 
and Romans knew it, and it is still in use. The 
upper surface of the stone was made concave; in 
this hollow the grain was rubbed or ground by 
means of another stone. This was worked for- 
ward and backward ; not rolled. Large numbers 
of these ancient saddle-stones have been discov- 
ered, and bear witness to the use to which they 
were put. The millers of Babylon, Nineveh, As- 
syria, and Egypt used this process. The method 
of grinding used by the native Africans of to-day 
is the same as that in use in the time of Abraham. 



134 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

The relics discovered in recent times in the ruins 
of ancient cities show with great fidelity to detail 
the exact process. A statuette of painted wood 
found near the pyramids at Dashur on the Nile 
not far from Gizeh is that of a woman kneeling 
and grinding grain by means of the saddle-stone. 
Two limestone statuettes from the tombs near the 
pyramids of Saggarat show women engaged in 
grinding by the same method and in the same 
posture. Both of these are of date about 2200 
b. c. Six hundred years later, when Joseph be- 
came Pharaoh's administrator of grain supplies, 
the chief baker was imprisoned and subsequently 
hanged for producing bad flour. His grinding 
was done on the saddle-stone. The Hebrews 
probably used the same appliance after they came 
out of Egypt, and, as with the Egyptians and 
Chaldeans, their women and servants did the 
grinding. The saddle-stone endured through the 
civilization of Greece and Rome, and the prehis- 
toric remains of almost every race in Europe 
abound with proofs of the fact that they used it. 
Across the Atlantic, the aboriginal inhabitants 
were saddle-stone millers, as their relics attest, 
and strangely enough, their mills were greatly 
superior in structure, detail, and finish to any 
saddle-stone of Europe at even its best period. 
Thus the Americans in prehistoric days seem to 
have led their transatlantic contemporaries in the 
art of flour-making, as they unquestionably do in 
many respects to-day. 

In some countries the mortar was a contempo- 
rary and ultimately a successor of the saddle- 
stone. The mortar was portable, but its great 
distinction was in being fashioned both inside and 
outside. This marked the step from barbarism to 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 



135 



civilization. In the mortar period, the Greeks 
made the first recorded milling revolution in sub- 
stituting men for women as flour-makers. The 
operatives were termed " pounders." The Ro- 
mans subsequently adopted this word, translat- 
ing it to "pistores." The term survived in Eng- 







^|! 




Ir^j^yV^^^^^lll' *,M,. f ' 1 ■H, 


Ell, 


wmJi 


PW ill 
mm?; 4§i 


»^^IW„j AN A55AY Of BREAD. W&RB&* 



land and -elsewhere long after millers ceased to 
make flour by pounding the grain. Two centu- 
ries before the birth of Christ milling was still 
drudgery and very often performed by slaves or 
criminals. The mill and the bakery were com- 
bined among the Romans and termed the " pistri- 
num." Servants and slaves were punished by 
being obliged to do the grinding. State mills 
were established among both Greeks and Romans, 
and criminals were sentenced to labour in them. 
The work of making and baking flour had been 
one business from the time of the hand-stone 
until the mortar period. Indeed, it was really 
a part of the domestic machinery of each house- 
hold, rather than a distinct industry. Pliny says 
there were no bakers in Rome until the war with 
Perseus of Macedonia, more than five hundred 



136 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

and eighty years after the building of the city ; 
the citizens used to bake their own bread, and 
of course grind their own flour. In 167 b. c, 
following the defeat of Perseus, a band of cap- 
tured Greek " pounders " were led into Rome, a 
part of the triumphal entry of Paulus JEmilius. 
These craftsmen were set to work at their occu- 
pation, grinding and baking, and this was really 
the foundation of the trade. Not long after 
Pliny's death the Romans abandoned the mortar 
for the quern. Less civilized nations continued 
to use it, and with the saddle-stone it lingered for 
many years, but was finally discarded by all save 
the rudest nations of the earth. 

The quern, an Italian invention of some two 
thousand years ago, was the next step in the prog- 
ress of milling. It was the first complete grind- 
ing machine in which the parts were mechanically 
combined, and succeeded loose stones. The quern 
introduced a circular motion, the upper stone re- 
volving upon the lower. The saddle-stone was a 
thrusting machine; the quern a revolving mill. 
This was the machine in use at the dawn of the 
Christian era. The familiar quotation, " Two 
women shall be grinding at the mill ; the one shall 
be taken and the other shall be left," was trans- 
lated by Wyckliff early in the fourteenth century : 
" Tweine wymmen schulen ben gryndynge in o 
querne, oon schal be taken and the tother lefte." 
The " mola versatilis," as the Romans called the 
appliance, became known as the quern with the 
introduction and spread of the mill through Brit- 
ain, Gaul, and Europe generally by the Romans. 
The quern of the early period was of one type; 
the lower stone was conical at first, then flattened ; 
the upper stone fitted its mate and conformed to 






THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 137 

its shape; a hollow in the centre, with a hole at 
the base, served as a hopper for the grain, and in 
a small hole drilled in the side of the upper stone 
a handle was inserted. An early but important 
improvement in the quern was the grooving of the 
grinding faces of the stone. The edges of the 
grooves performed the grinding, and their hollows 
conveyed the meal to the rim of the stones; this 
was the rude initiation of the right principle of 
methodical furrowing, not fully developed until 
the era of water-mills. The quern was the origi- 
nal British flour-mill. In parts of Europe and 
Asia it is still used, and it is found abundantly in 
China and japan. Among the Arabs also the 
the quern is employed. Mr. Richard Bennett, to 
whose admirable work, the History of Corn Mill- 
ing, the writer is greatly indebted for much of the 
information contained in this chapter, found a 
quern in ordinary daily use at a secluded cottage 
near Drontheim, Norway, in 1897. This quaint 
mill stood upon a table three feet high. A square 
frame inclosed the top of the table and contained 
a loose circular casing surrounding the stones. 
The flour was removed from this by sweeping it 
at intervals to the right-hand corner, where it 
escaped through a hole and fell into a drawer ; 
altogether a rude but effective grinding machine. 
A little more than a century ago the quern was in 
common use in parts of the United Kingdom, but, 
as Mr. Bennett says : " The march of improve- 
ment has rapidly thinned the number of British 
querns in use, and milled flour from Liverpool or 
Minneapolis shortly promises to become even less 
of a curiosity in the retired home of the quern 
than the old hand-mill itself." 

At least something more than passing mention 



138 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 



is due to the ancient and now obsolete quern as a 
development in milling processes, because of the 
notable struggle between landlord and tenant, 
between the public and the lord, which followed 
the execution of the feudal law of milling soke in 
England; a characteristic fight of the Briton 
against oppression. Soke or soc was the monop- 
oly formerly claimed by the mill-owner of grind- 
ing all the grain used within the manor or town- 
ship in which the 
mill stood. The 
quern was the 
poor man's mill, 
operated in his 
own house with- 
out toll. The 
lords of the manor 
in granting char- 
ters to their ten- 
ants usually stip- 
ulated for a reser- 
vation of all mill- 
ing rights and 
privileges, com- 
pelling tenants to 
operate the mills 
they erected, and 
forbidding the use 
of querns. When 
religious institutions were endowed with gifts of 
mills — a frequent occurrence — the grants gave the 
monks the exclusive right to grind grain for the 
district and prohibited hand-mills. One of the 
earliest milling documents is a charter given to 
the monks of Embsay Priory, Yorkshire, in 1150. 
The rights of the king's mills of Dee, at Chester, 




Quern. Isle of Man. 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 1 39 

were confirmed by Edward III in 1356, and the 
use of hand-mills was forbidden. The laws estab- 
lishing such rights are older than the English 
statutes. These customs prevailed in a more or 
less stringent form throughout Europe for many 
centuries, and were the cause of a determined 
effort to suppress querns, which lasted seven hun- 
dred years, from the eleventh to the eighteenth 
century. In order to secure an absolute monopo- 
ly of the milling business in the district protected 
by the custom of milling soke, the manorial lords 
waged a war of extermination against querns. 
Some were purchased, others stolen, and all thus 
obtained were destroyed. King, priest, and squire 
insisted on their rights and searched the cottages 
for the forbidden machines, dragging them forth 
from their hiding-places and breaking them up. 
If the peasant objected, the law was appealed to, 
and it invariably sustained the strong against the 
weak. 

The history, furnished by the excellent monks 
themselves, of a prolonged fight over querns at 
St. Albany's Abbey, Cirencester, is merely an exact 
and recorded instance of what must have been 
a somewhat common occurrence in those days. 
The row began in 1274, and continued for many 
years. The good abbot, worthy soul, owned mill- 
ing rights for the entire town, so he ordered the 
citizens to forfeit to him their treasured querns. 
He agreed, in consideration, that he would solemn- 
ly swear his miller to strict honesty, and, in the 
event of a dispute, that he would try the case be- 
fore a court of twelve jurors. For a time this 
arrangement was maintained, but after patiently 
playing the abbot's little game for fifty years the 
townspeople rebelled. They attacked the abbot 



140 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

and besieged his abbey, successfully obtaining 
from the good man a charter of liberties — of a 
sort — although it did not include absolute free- 
dom from compulsory grinding at his mill. They 
immediately set up their querns again, while the 
abbot quietly awaited his chance for a return en- 
gagement. They were in no hurry in merry Eng- 
land at that time, and the abbot waited six years 
for his opportunity. When it came he descended 
in force on the town, searched the houses, cap- 




Ancient Swedish Mill. 

tured the contraband mills and carried them off 
to the abbey, where they were used to pave the 
floor of his private room as an evidence of his 
prowess. Fifty years rolled by during which the 
excellent abbot was gathered to his fathers, and 
his successors walked over the quern-paved floor. 
In 1381, Wat Tyler having stirred up a rebellion, 
the slow-moving townsmen bethought them of 
their time-honoured grudge against the abbey, 
and again attacked it. They forced admission 
within its walls, dug up the paved floor, recov- 
ered the broken querns and distributed them as 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 141 

trophies of their victory. In return the abbot 
made a raid on the town with his bailiffs and car- 
ried away the citizens' hand-mills. Then the bur- 
gesses made a mistake. If they had patiently 
waited a matter of fifty years or so they might 
have caught the abbot napping and have repeat- 
ed their previous successes, but they were hot 
and hasty and appealed to the law. This must 
have caused the jolly priest to shake his plump 
sides with laughter, for he well knew his legal 
rights. The result of the lawsuit was that twenty 
of the townsmen executed a bond in behalf 
of themselves and fellow-citizens agreeing to 
pay the abbot a fine of one hundred marks, 
about $330, and to grind their grain henceforth 
at his mill. 

The charter granted to Vale Royal Abbey in 
Cheshire in 1299, gave it the milling rights of the 
neighbouring town. For thirty years they were 
duly exercised ; but the townsmen then rebelled 
and arose in arms to prevent the capture of their 
querns. Then ensued a hopeless struggle, termi- 
nated by the submission of the mistaken people. 
A number of them appeared before the gentle 
prelate in his monastery with halters around their 
necks, formally admitting their error. In many 
of these quarrels the worthy clergy of the time 
used the spiritual weapon of excommunication to 
excellent effect. In 1229 the tenants of the ad- 
mirable prior of Dunstable refused to pay taxes 
or to grind at the priory mills. They not only 
withheld taxes and tithes, but they trampled down 
the prior's grain and told wicked stories about 
the worthy monks. The clergy retaliated by 
threatening to excommunicate the rebels. The 
townspeople weakened at the threat to a degree 



142 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

and said that they would go to the mill, but rather 
than pay the taxes, they would take the chances 
of going to a hotter place. The prior was pro- 
perly grieved at this impertinent answer, and ap- 
pealed to the chief justice, who threatened the 
people with the law. This was unavailing, and 
finally the Bishop of Lincoln was asked to assist 
the perplexed prior. His grace did so by sol- 
emnly excommunicating the whole of the turbu- 
lent townsmen, but it was only after pacific arbi- 
tration that the long-standing feud w T as healed. 
These occurrences show under what circumstances 
the quern maintained its hold upon popular esti- 
mation. It should be noted that the milling soke 
was not exercised by the millers, but by the land- 
lords who owned the mill. 

Various adaptations of hand-mills were used 
previous to the abolition of soke laws; more ma- 
chinery of a simple character was added to the 
quern, but the principle of grinding flour by 
means of mill-stones continued until very recent 
years. The greatest changes during the many 
centuries were made in the motive power rather 
than in the method of grinding the grain itself. 
Originally the woman was the universal miller 
and supplied the power which drove the hand- 
stone and the saddle-stone herself. Then, as al- 
ready related, slaves and even criminals did the 
drudgery of grinding. The mills in operation 
in Pompeii when it was destroyed in 78 a. d., as 
shown by the remains discovered in its ruins, 
were slave-propelled. Cattle mills and slave mills 
were originally similar ; the ass was ordinarily used 
for mill-driving, and for many years in Rome the 
human animals and their brute companions per- 
formed the flour-making for the Eternal City. 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 143 

After the abolition of slavery in the fourth cen- 
tury, cattle mills were generally adopted. Tread- 
mills worked by convicts were in use in Europe 




Pompeian Mills. 

as early as 1537, and are still used in some coun- 
tries — the sole survivors of the old Roman slave 
mills. 

The slave and cattle mill preceded the water- 
mill. First the Greeks and then the Romans used 
water as power for grain-grinding. The early 
allusions to this, the world's first power mill, occur 
in the chronicles written from 65 to 85 B.C. In 
northern and western Europe primitive water- 
mills have existed beyond all historic records. 
The Norse mill, as it is usually termed, was es- 
tablished in Britain at an early date. From the 



144 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

seventh to the eleventh century this type was in 
use in Ireland. In portions of Scotland the Norse 
mill is still not uncommon. The mediaeval Roman 
mill was of the vertical type. Records of a water- 
mill in France exist in a twelfth-century manu- 
script in the Harleian collection. Prior to the 
Conquest, England abounded with water-mills; 
the smaller being of the Norse or Greek type, the 
larger of the more complete Roman pattern. 
The Domesday Survey, finished in 1086, gives 
complete statistics of the mills of England, in- 
cluding their number and location, with particu- 




Dutch Wind-mill. 

lars of rental, etc. The lists contain the names 
of numerous places where ancient water-mills 
still exist, and where milling has been continu- 
ously done since the days of the Saxons. 

It is not within the scope of this book to give 
technical details of milling processes ; therefore 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 



MS 



an account of the improvements made in water- 
mills from their introduction to the present time 
is not attempted. The wind-mill came into exist- 
ence much later than the water-mill. A wind-mill 
tower of the Cru- 
sader period still 
exists in Syria. 
The year 1200 
seems to be about 
the date when they 
were introduced 
into England, and B| Sl ip 

various styles de- 
veloped from the jg \ 
original type and 
came into almost 
universal use. The 
picturesque wind- 
mill of Holland is 
a good example of 
the tower wind- 
mill. In 1784 the 
Gentlemen's Mag- 
azine announced 
that " A new dis- 
covery has lately 
been made and is 
now carrying into execution near Blackfriar's 
Bridge of a method of grinding corn by means of 
a fire-engine, which communicates a power of 
working thirty-six pair of stones, besides other 
subordinate machinery for bolting, etc. ; this 
promises great profit if the inventor can carry 
it into effect at a moderate expense." The mill 
thus referred to stood at the Surrey end of Black- 
friars Bridge, London, and the engines w r ere two 
10 




Welsh Wind-mill. 



146 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

50-horse-power, made by Boulton & Watt. They 
worked successfully, and thus the steam-mill at 
last entered the milling field. 

As the changes in flour-making were gradual, 
so also was the change in the character of the 
miller himself. When the grinding was purely a 
domestic occupation, the women of the household 
was both miller and baker. Then slaves or 
servants ground and baked. Slowly milling as a 
distinct trade emerged from its surroundings, and 
millers ceased to be bakers. Cattle, water, wind, 
and steam became the grinding power, except in 
barbaric countries where ancient usage still lin- 
gers. The feudal laws held the miller in bondage 
almost as much as they did his customer, inde- 
pendent mills were few in the middle ages, the 
lord of the manor owned the mill and his miller 
was a hireling or merely rented the plant. In 
time, this system passed away and at last the 
miller was free — a member of a distinct and sep- 
arate trade. 

At the end of the eighteenth century, both in 
Europe and America, water and wind mills in 
large numbers were doing a thriving business. 
The plant of the time was a structure of few parts 
and its processes were quite simple. The wheat 
was cleaned by a machine consisting of a pair of 
cylinders or screens and a blast of air. The grind- 
ing-stones by this time had become flat and round 
and were scientifically furrowed ; they ran close 
together in order that, when the wheat passed 
through them, the greatest amount of flour might 
be produced. The meal was bolted and the tail- 
ings, consisting of bran, middlings, and adherent 
flour, again sifted and reground. This was es- 
sentially the mill-stone process of milling before 



148 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

Oliver Evans improved upon it, and although it 
was simple, in spite of its imperfections, the flour 
it produced was so desirable that, from being an 
insignificant trade, milling grew to be one of the 
greatest and most valuable industries of the time. 
The miller was a rising man, although he was still 
more allied to the farming than the industrial 
class, and did not dream of the position in the 
commercial world he was destined to occupy. 
Grist-mills were the rule and merchant mills ex- 
ceptional. 

A peculiar fact in connection with the develop- 
ment of milling is that to-day every type of mill 
known in the history of the trade can still be 
found in active and practical operation in some 
quarter of the globe, so that the course of the 
various processes may be clearly traced by using 
modern examples. Some Indian tribes in America 
crush grain in prehistoric fashion ; the saddle- 
stone method, such as was used in the time of 
Abraham, is still doing duty in parts of Africa ; in 
the Transvaal the pestle and mortar may be seen 
in common use; the quern may be found still in 
commission in certain parts of Europe and Asia ; 
the slave mill was but the prototype of the tread- 
mill ; mills driven by cattle are not extraordinary ; 
water-mills, tide-mills, wind-mills, tripod-mills, 
post-mills, tower-mills ; mills operated by steam 
and electricity ; stone-mills and roller-mills — from 
the beginning to the present, the story of milling 
progress may be read by the curious in devices 
and machines still in use and still performing 
practical w T ork. 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 149 



CHAPTER XI 

Progress of milling — The milling revolution — The purifier 
and its story — Development of Minneapolis as a milling 
centre — Direct exports of spring-wheat flour — The mill 
explosion of 1878 — The coming of the roller-mill — The 
abandonment of mill-stones — The modern flour-mill 
— Commercial milling — The largest mills in the world 
— Review of present milling conditions 

The manufacture of flour as it is understood 
in its largest sense to-day is really a new industry 
both in America and Europe ; for it has been 
created since the introduction of new process 
milling which alone made the operation of large 
flour-mills possible, and this occurred only about 
thirty years ago. It is such a modern industry 
that the statistical authorities at Washington are 
still unable to differentiate between flour and 
grist mills, and it will take at least another dec- 
ade for British and American statesmen to under- 
stand that the business of flour-making has ceased 
to be a semi-agricultural occupation and has long 
become a great commercial industry. The inland 
and ocean carriers, the legislators, the national au- 
thorities, and the general public do not yet under- 
stand that the exportation of a country's wheat, 
instead of its flour, is not an evidence of a nation's 
welfare, but rather the measure of its lost oppor- 
tunities and a commercial blunder. The industry 
as it is to-day is so new that the miller who sold 
the first spring-wheat flour abroad is still in the 
prime of life, and other millers who saw the dawn 
of the new era, as well as milling engineers who 
installed the first of the modern machines, are 
still engaged in active business. 



150 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

The saddle-stone process was that of the indi- 
vidual or household miller; the advent of the 
quern and its improvements marked the begin- 
ning of manorial or village milling ; with the mill- 
stone came the grist-mill, grinding for a larger 




Mill-stones grinding. 



district and exacting a toll from the farmers who 
brought grain to it, latterly developing, in a 
moderate way, into the merchant mill in some 
favourably located spots in Europe and America. 
Essentially, the mill-stone era was the grist-mill 
period. This was swept away almost entirely, ex- 
cept in the more isolated rural districts, by what 
is called the " revolution in milling," which first 
brought the purifier into use and soon after sub- 
stituted chilled iron rolls for the long-used mill- 
stone, thereby enormously increasing the output 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 151 

of the plants, creating the modern merchant mill, 
with its traffic extending to remote markets at 
home and abroad, and relegating the grist-mill to 
comparative obscurity and disuse. With this 
change came the present race of merchant millers, 
as distinctly different from the typical grist-miller 
of the mill-stone period as he was from the quern- 
miller, or as the last named was from the slave 
miller of Roman days. 

For the first seventy years of the last century 
the development of milling processes, especially 
in America, was so slow as to be almost imper- 
ceptible. In parts of Europe experimental ad- 
vances were made, but their effect was almost 
entirely local. Transportation facilities were such 
that millers would have been unable to go far 
abroad in their search for trade, even if the mill- 
stone had not been a method unsuited for large 
production. It is true that Oliver Evans, an 
American, made material improvements in 1790. 
His contrivances were simple, but, as they ad- 
vanced the automatic handling of grain and flour, 
they were in line with developments which followed 
later, and were therefore valuable. He added to 
the milling plant of his day the elevator, the con- 
veyor, the drill, and other devices. Labour-saving 
was the object of Oliver Evans's improvements and 
they were welcomed and adopted, although, like 
many inventors of flour-mill machinery, he was 
but poorly requited by pecuniary success ; his 
name, however, occupies a deservedly high place 
in milling annals. 

After Evans's time there came a lot of petty 
inventions of more or less merit. Various im- 
proved methods of dressing mill-stones were intro- 
duced ; increased care was exercised in the selec- 



152 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 



tion and treatment of mill-stones, the choicest of 
which came from French quarries ; there were 
new devices for levelling bed-stones, better balance 
boxes for the runner, and silent feeders and ex- 
haust to take the hot air from the stones. In the 
seventies several mechanical 
devices were invented for 
dressing mill-stones. 
k These had undoubted 
merit, but they came 
into being too late 
to enjoy great suc- 
cess, and it was but 
a few years until 
the mi 11-st on es 
they were intend- 
ed to work upon 
became obsolete, 
and their occupa- 
tion was forever 
gone. These ma- 
chines are worthy of 
V note, not only because 
of their ephemeral intrin- 
sic value, but also on ac- 
count of a permanent con- 
tribution their inventors 
made to the American milling industry which still 
endures and will probably exist as long as the 
trade lasts. In the endeavour to introduce their 
machines to the milling public, they found no 
printed medium at hand and therefore proceeded 
to establish one of their own. Rival machine- 
makers began the publication of two milling jour- 
nals, the primary object of which was to exploit 
their stone-dressers. This was in 1873, an ^ al- 




An American Operative 
Miller. 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 153 

though the machines they were created to adver- 
tise passed out of use with the mill-stone, the 
journals themselves survived and found an op- 
portunity for expansion in the awakened interest 
of American millers in milling devices and im- 
provements. Although British milling was far 
older than the American industry, it did not pos- 
sess a trade journal until those in the United 
States were established. It is significant of the 
change in the character of the milling trade which 
came with the new process, that before its advent 
agricultural journals were probably quite sufficient 
for the miller as well as the farmer, but after its 
introduction, he required a distinctive trade liter- 
ature of his own ; a want which the publishers of 
the two leading milling journals were quick to 
see and supply, with the result that although the 
machines are almost forgotten, the journals estab- 
lished to advertise them are flourishing and suc- 
cessful publications. 

In the matter of progress in milling methods 
the first seventy years of the nineteenth century 
was a brooding period. The trade was getting 
ready for a radical and astounding change such as 
few industries have ever known. This reform was 
to sweep everything before it in its sudden and 
unexpected onslaught, to overwhelm all opposi- 
tion, ruin those who stubbornly clung to old ways, 
enrich those who were alert and progressive, break 
down all barriers, divert established trade channels, 
open up new fields for American grain-growing, 
utilize opportunities which had long lain dormant, 
effect a complete change in the industrial map of 
the American northwest, build railroads, create new 
routes to the old markets, reduce freight rates, 
immensely cheapen and improve the bread of the 



154 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

old as well as the new world, drive out of commis- 
sion in Britain and America thousands of time- 
honoured old-fashioned mills unable to compete in 
the new order of things, and bring into being flour- 
mills of a capacity such as the world never before 
dreamed of. 

During the brooding period antecedent to this 
era of activity and progress, millers generally, al- 
though of a somewhat sluggish and narrow busi- 
ness habit, were prosperous. Flour commanded 
a high price in the world's markets and there was 
good profit in milling. It was indeed the golden 
age of the mill-stone. Several important milling 
centres developed in the United States, the flour 
from which became famous in the home markets. 
Although the European export trade did not be- 
come very large until later, there had existed for 
many years a steady and remunerative demand 
for American flour in the West Indies and South 
America. About 1823, when the Erie Canal was 
opened, Rochester, N. Y., became an important 
milling-point, a position it maintained for twenty 
years, during which its title, " the Flour City/' 
was well sustained. Richmond, Va., was a large 
producer of flour, and one of its brands, the Haxall, 
marked the climax of excellence in mill-stone mill- 
ing. New York city had several valuable mills 
doing a satisfactory domestic and foreign trade. 
St. Louis, Mo,, was the prominent western milling 
centre, and the standard of flour was kept at the 
highest point by its millers, who had a large and 
growing trade throughout the west and south. 
The flour of the time was made entirely from 
winter-wheat except in States where only spring- 
wheat could be obtained, and there the demand 
for it was merely local. The coming of the puri- 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 155 

fier made spring-wheat flour valuable; before its 
invention and use it was regarded as far inferior to 
flour from winter-wheat, being strong, but of poor 
colour. The method of milling then in use was 
such that the intrinsic value of spring-wheat was 
unknown and unsuspected. There were a few in- 
significant mills in Minneapolis, attracted to the 
spot because of the cheap water-power afforded 
by the Falls of St. Anthony, but doing only a local 
trade. Throughout the entire United States the 
flour-mills were comparatively small. In 1870 
there may have been a few mills capable of pro- 
ducing 1,000 barrels daily, but these were regarded 
as exceedingly large. This figure is now consid- 
ered merely the unit of capacity for successful 
modern milling in America. 

A machine was introduced in Minnesota in 
1870 which was to milling what the reaper was to 
agriculture. No other one machine ever accom- 
plished what it did for the world of bread-eaters. 
About the time of its introduction good flour sold 
for ten dollars or more a barrel. The average 
price for patent flour in these days is about one- 
third of its average then. The machine itself did 
not reduce the cost of making flour, but it enabled 
the miller to grind from the hitherto despised 
spring-wheat a product which immediately com- 
manded a price equal to the best winter-wheat 
flour. This gave a great impetus to milling in 
the northwest, increased the demand for spring- 
wheat, rendered valuable the crops of Minnesota, 
the Dakotas, and western Canada, and led to the 
agricultural development of that section of the 
western continent. Spring-wheat flour sprang 
into favour in America, and when introduced 
abroad, especially in the United Kingdom, won 



156 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

its way against all competition. In the end, the 
demand for it caused British millers to remodel 
their mills and grind a mixture of home-grown 
and American wheats. 

Undoubtedly the invention of the purifier, 
which was merely a device for separating mid- 
dlings and flour, was French. In a French work 
by Benoit, published in 1863, the purifier is fully 
and accurately described. Perrigault secured a 
patent for a middlings purifier in France on Au- 
gust 16, i860. To Edmund N. La Croix, a native 
of France, belongs the honour and credit of intro- 
ducing and building the first purifier in America. 
The poor man received nothing else from the ma- 
chine which made millions for others and changed 
the industrial future of the northwest, having 
been treated most shabbily by the organized mill- 
ers of his time as well as by those who pirated 
his invention or adaptation, and the distinction 
given him here is his due. The purifier of Perri- 
gault may have been the original of his machine, 
but had not La Croix built a similar one in Min- 
neapolis in 1870 the process it inaugurated would 
not have become known until later, if ever, and 
the loss would have been incalculable. La Croix 
was an educated Frenchman, but unaccustomed 
to business ways, and lacked knowledge of the 
English language. Had he been shrewder and 
more suspicious, he w 7 ould not have allowed the 
fruits of his work to escape him, and he might 
have obtained some of the millions which went to 
others as a result of his experiments. 

The history of the purifier is an unwritten 
industrial romance. Fragments of it have been 
told, but the entire story is a trade legend, 
abounding in dramatic facts rivalling fiction, 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 



157 



which awaits the coming of a comprehending 
novelist to weave it into a tale of absorbing inter- 
est. Briefly, the story is this : La Croix came to 
Minneapolis in 1870, and there built for a miller 




The La Croix Purifier. 



the first purifier known in America. For ten 
months the machine was operated successfully in 
the main, although it was crude. La Croix was im- 
mersed in his work, constantly experimenting and 
devising improvements. One fault with the de-. 
vice was that it became clogged with flour. The 
Frenchman planned an automatic brush to over- 
come this difficulty, but was slow in perfecting it, 
and careless in discussing his plans. In the same 
mill in which the purifier was being operated 
there was employed a stone-dresser, a coarse, un- 
lettered workman, huge in stature, ponderous, 



158 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

sensual, and taciturn, yet possessed of a sort of 
underhanded cunning, which in this instance an- 
swered his purpose exceedingly well. This stone- 
dresser, Smith, realized the possibilities of the 
new machine, and lost no time in securing its con- 
trol for himself. He claimed to have invented 
the purifier and the attached travelling brush, and 
perhaps he did apply the brush to the machine. 

While La Croix was experimenting and dream- 
ing, Smith secured patents and thenceforth posed 
as the creator of the modern purifier, although 
he never subsequently showed the faintest trace 
of inventive talent. Smith went to Jackson, 
Mich., with his patents, and there succeeded in 
interesting capitalists in the invention. In 1878 
the Smith Middlings Purifier Company was or- 
ganized. The patents obtained by Smith were 
vested in a corporation formed for the purpose of 
controlling all purifier patents obtainable, and the 
Smith Company was licensed as sole manufactur- 
ers under it. In order to secure a monopoly of 
the purifier business, suits were brought against 
millers who were operating purifiers not made 
under Smith's patents. By this time the value of 
the machine had become known, the new process 
of milling had started and thousands of purifiers 
were in use. The suits were met by the millers, 
who joined together to defend themselves in an 
organization called the Millers 5 National Associ- 
ation. The litigation cost the allied millers $100,- 
000 for attorneys' fees in obtaining evidence and 
preparing to meet the issue in court. In 1880, 
while the suits were pending with every prospect 
of a decision favourable to the millers, the matter 
was, for some unknown reason, settled out of 
court by a compromise whereby the purifier claim- 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 159 

ants agreed to dismiss the suits, and the members 
of the millers' association were licensed under a 
royalty to use the purifiers in their possession, 
they agreeing to thereafter purchase no " infring- 
ing " machines. 

This gave the Smith Company a virtual mon- 
opoly of the purifier business, and competing 
concerns were forced to abandon the field. The 
unfortunate La Croix, meantime, chagrined at 
being outwitted, left Minneapolis and soon after 
died broken-hearted and poor. He bequeathed 
his patents to his family. During the litigation 
between the owners of the Smith patents and the 
millers, the wife and daughters of La Croix were 
living in Rochester, N. Y., in humble circum- 
stances. To them came the legal representative 
of the purifier company, offering a large sum for 
the La Croix patents, which were needed to 
strengthen the claimant's suits. Knowing that 
the object of the purifier company was to harass 
the trade, and relying upon the individual assur- 
ance of millers that their action w r ould be properly 
appreciated, the heirs of La Croix, with a rare 
spirit of self-denial, refused this offer, although 
they were greatly in need of money. La Croix's 
brother organized the La Croix Purifier Company 
in Indianapolis, and sought to manufacture ma- 
chines under his brother's patents for the benefit 
of the La Croix heirs. In this undertaking he 
was succeeding reasonably well when the settle- 
ment of 1880 between the millers and the purifier 
claimants occurred. This gave the monopoly of 
the business to the Smith Company, and the very 
millers who had profited by the honourable con- 
duct of the La Croix heirs made it impossible for 
them to gain a living by making and selling puri- 



160 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

fiers. This act of ingratitude was probably com- 
pleted by the Millers' National Association with- 
out a realizing sense of the effect upon its 
defenceless allies, the La Croix family. It is hard 
to believe that reputable millers would deliber- 
ately abandon those who had been loyal to them 
in their long fight, and it is possible, though inex- 
cusable, that in their anxiety to conclude a tedi- 
ous and expensive contest, they forgot the ex- 
istence of these modest but deserving people ; 
otherwise they might easily have provided in 
some way for a satisfactory purchase of the La 
Croix patents, and thus have properly acknowl- 
edged and rewarded the loyalty of the family. 
The result meant ruin for the unfortunate heirs 
of La Croix. The manufactory at Indianapolis 
was abandoned, and the little family in time came 
to know absolute and bitter destitution. So acute 
did this become that very recently a milling jour- 
nal, learning of it, made an appeal in behalf of the 
survivors, by which a purse of a few thousand 
dollars was raised and given to the La Croix heirs 
as a belated but slight recognition of their serv- 
ices to the milling industry. Given a monopoly 
of the purifier business, the Smith Company made 
immense sums. At first, the ex-stone-dresser was 
wise enough to allow the business men associated 
with him to manage the concern while he travelled 
and spent his income according to his own un- 
trained and freakish fancy, but later he insisted 
upon taking the administration of affairs into his 
own hands, and his abler associates withdrew. 
This was the beginning of the end. Reckless and 
foolish extravagance, silly and showy excesses 
and bad business methods, soon undermined the 
once flourishing establishment, and ten years after 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT l6l 

it had secured a monopoly of the business, the 
Smith Company collapsed in a disastrous and dis- 
graceful failure. 

To return to the course of the milling revolu- 
tion, or rather to its initial stage — new-process mill- 
ing. Certain mills in Minnesota early discovered 
that by virtue of " high grinding " and purified 
middlings they could produce a flour which found 
eager buyers in the east willing to pay an un- 
precedented price for it. The mill at Hastings, 
Minn., owned by Stephen Gardner, was a pioneer 
in this method ; so also were the mills at North- 
field and Dundas. A few of these "country" 
mills, as they were called, were somewhat quicker 
to put the new method into practical use than the 
mills of Minneapolis, but that city was the centre 
from which, for many years after, the waves of 
milling progress radiated. Soon after the puri- 
fier was introducd, Minneapolis became, by reason 
of its increase in flour production, the most im- 
portant milling centre in the world. When, in 
1870, La Croix built his first machine, the Minne- 
apolis millers were ready to seize upon any op- 
portunity and push it vigorously. It happened 
that the group of men then interested in flour- 
making on the Falls of St. Anthony were of the 
exact type necessary to fully develop and expand 
new ideas in milling. Among them were some 
whose names have since attained world-wide 
celebrity in connection with flour, and who were 
capable of soundly establishing the foundations 
of the giant industry which followed their initi- 
ative. Governor Cadwallader C. Washburn was 
the miller of broadest vision and greatest fore- 
sight who realized more than his fellows what 
great possibilities the future might have in store 



162 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 




Governor C 



Washburn. 



for the new milling city. Of extraordinary strength 
of mind and executive ability, indomitable energy 
and large financial resource, he arose to his op- 
portunities to the fullest 
degree, and lived to see 
his confidence justified by 
results. Mr. George H. 
Christian was the first in 
Minneapolis to experiment 
with the purifier, and it 
was in his mill that La 
Croix built the original 
machine. Subsequently, 
Mr. Christian brought his 
keen, logical mind and his 
genius for business to bear 
on the milling problems of 
the time, and solved them 
to his satisfaction. Mr. Charles A. Pillsbury, de- 
cidedly one of the greatest 
merchant millers who ever 
lived, was fortunately in 
the milling business at the 
beginning of the new proc- 
ess, and by his prompt- 
ness in adopting modern 
ideas, his courage in ex- 
ploiting them, and his tal- 
ent for extending and 
building up trade connec- 
tions, founded the great 
establishment which now 
bears his name. Besides 
the Washburns, the Pills- 
burys, and the Christians, there were other mill- 
ers in Minneapolis at that time who were of the 




Mr. C. A. Pillsbury. 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 



163 




stuff necessary to control large and developing 
interests, and they did their part well in the build- 
ing up of the largest milling centre in the world. 

In i8']i-']2 the purifier 
began to be used by the 
Minnesota millers, and 
profits ranging from one 
to three dollars a barrel 
on the product of the mills 
were soon realized. With 
such a stimulus, the mill- 
ing industry in the north- 
west made great strides, 
and its progress amazed 
and troubled flour-makers 
elsewhere, stirring the 
whole milling world at 
home and abroad with a 
vague spirit of unrest and uneasiness 

of improvements began 
which was to last for years. 
Until this time spring- 
wheat flour had never been 
sold abroad direct from 
the mill ; indeed it is doubt- 
ful if it had found its way 
there indirectly in quanti- 
ties worth considering. It 
was Governor Washburn 
who, in 1877, said to Mr. 
William H. Dunwoody, his 
associate in business: " Go 
to England. Start the 
people there to buying our 
flour, and where stand these mills, which now 
seem so large, will be erected others far surpass- 



Mr. George H. Christian. 

An era 




Mr. William H. Dunwoodv. 



1 64 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

ing them in importance and capacity." Mr. Dun- 
woody did so, and after overcoming much preju- 
dice and opposition finally succeeded in establish- 
ing a demand for his flour in England. This was 
the beginning of the spring-wheat flour export 
trade. In 1902 Minneapolis alone shipped more 
than three million barrels of flour to foreign coun- 
tries, and Mr. Dunwoody, now one of the wealth- 
iest millers in the world, has lived to see Gov- 
ernor Washburn's prophecy fully realized. On 
May 2, 1878, a fire in the Washburn A mill caused 
an explosion of flour-dust, which completely de- 
stroyed the most important of the mills and killed 
a number of operatives. Dust-collectors had not 
then been invented, and the busy mills were filled 
with a fine dust which under certain circumstances 
became as inflammable and destructive as gun- 
powder. To this was due the catastrophe which 
temporarily checked the growth of the Minneap- 
olis milling industry. 

The morning after the disaster the indomitable 
millers set to work to rebuild their plants. Such 
was their sublime confidence in the future of the 
business that they planned the reconstruction on 
a greatly enlarged scale. They were unaware that 
a still greater change in milling methods was im- 
pending, and that the days of the old and tried 
mill-stone were numbered ; therefore the rebuilt 
mills were all equipped with stones for grinding 
and purifiers for the separation of middlings. 
Several years before this rolls had been introduced 
into America by Edward P. Allis & Co., mill-build- 
ers, whose milling engineer, Mr. William D. Gray, 
had planned and built some of the most important 
mills in the country. At first these rolls were 
of marble, but later of porcelain, imported from 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 1 65 

Zurich, where they were made by the house of 
Weggmann. At the time of the rebuilding of the 
Minneapolis mills the roller process, which soon 
succeeded the mill-stone, was considered altogeth- 
er too experimental for practical use. Governor 
Washburn during his foreign travels had seen the 
rolls at work, and from curiosity had ordered a 
few sets; these had arrived in Minneapolis, but 
were still unboxed. He contracted with Mr. Gray 
in 187S for a small experimental roller-mill, and 




Modern Roller Mill. 



when completed this was the first complete roller- 
mill in the United States, and probably the first 
complete automatic roller-mill in the world. 
Chilled-iron rolls soon succeeded the porcelain 
variety, and this type of grinding machine, beau- 



166 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

tifully made and carefully adjusted, then began 
to displace the mill-stone throughout the milling 
world. In a few years all the plants in Minneap- 
olis were roller-mills. 

The substitution of rolls for mill-stones was the 
most radical advance ever made in the science of 
milling. It is claimed by the Hungarian millers 
that the Americans appropriated their methods, 
and that to the millers of Budapesth belongs the 
credit of having been the first to adopt the roller 
process of making flour. The Americans do not 
claim that the roller-mill was invented by them, 
nor do they deny that steel rolls were in use in 
Hungary before they were adopted in the United 
States. They insist, however, that their system 
of milling automatically by means of rolls is their 
own, and that the roller-mill was neither invented 
nor first used in Budapesth. The Hungarian 
roller-mill-makers claim that the first roller-mill 
plant was installed in Budapesth in 1874; that 
rolls were shipped by them to Minneapolis in 1878, 
to Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Russia 
three years earlier, and to France in 1876. This 
may all be quite true ; nevertheless the claim that 
chilled-iron rolls took their origin in Hungary 
is fallacious. The Farrell Foundry of Ansonia, 
Conn., entered an order on September 21, 1874, 
for chilled-iron rolls for George H. Christian & 
Co., of Minneapolis. However, in seeking for the 
origin of the type of roll now in universal use one 
must go back fifty years further. Unquestionably 
the inventor of the roller-mill was Helfenburger, 
who in 1820 built and experimented with the first 
roller-mill at Rohrschach, Switzerland. This was 
never developed. Jakob Sulzberger, of Frauen- 
feld, Switzerland, invented the first successful sys- 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 



167 



tern of grinding cereals by rolls. His mill was 
built in 1832 and started in 1833, and was an im- 
mediate and complete success. The honour of 
the invention, as well as the practical adaptation 
of chilled-iron rolls for making flour, belongs 
unquestionably to Switzerland, and there is no 
lack of evidence to prove it. Sulzberger subse- 
quently erected roller-mills at Mayence, Milan, 
Munich, Leipzig, and Stettin, and in 1839 the P es ~ 
ter Walzmlihle of Budapesth was equipped with 
chilled-iron rolls made in Rohrschach by Helfen- 
burger, and finished by Sulzberger in Zurich. 
The Frauenfeld Mill Company, the original roller- 
mill, continued in business until 1846, when it be- 
came out of date, and its owners decided not to 
rebuild it. 

During the early '8os rolls rapidly superseded 
the mill-stone in all the principal mills in the United 




Interior of a Modern Mill. 



States and Canada, and soon became the standard 
for new and modern mills the world over. The 
mill-stone had served its allotted time and was re- 
tired with high honours and pleasant memories. 



1 68 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

It is now hopelessly obsolete, except in remote 
districts into which the latest milling inventions 
have not penetrated. These are few and far be- 
tween in the milling sections of America. Fol- 
lowing the purifier and the roll came a train of 
useful inventions which were incorporated in the 
roller system of milling — dust-collectors, scourers, 
bolters, separators, sifters, and other machines. 
After the radical changes incident to the revolu- 
tion in milling, and the rebuilding and remodel- 
ing of many mills from stones to the roller sys- 
tem, the progress of the trade mechanically has 
been in the direction of minor improvements, and 
a closer attention to economy in cost of produc- 
tion, made necessary by the most intense compe- 
tition, and the reduction of profits to a minimum. 
The introduction of the new system of milling 
utterly destroyed thousands of small rural mills 
in the United States which were not able to meet 
modern competition ; in fact, it created a new 
type of mill of very large capacity, and had a 
tendency to concentrate mills at points possess- 
ing favourable shipping facilities. In the United 
Kingdom the competition of the large modern 
mills at the ports and the increased use of Ameri- 
can flour has had a destructive effect upon the 
small rustic mill with its picturesque surroundings, 
and it is rapidly passing away. The mill of the 
twentieth century is a large manufactory of flour, 
with great capacity, employing many operatives, 
and managed by millers who may know but little 
about the mechanical details, but are wise in 
methods of selling, and especially careful in keep- 
ing the cost of production at the lowest figure 
possible ; the competition being terrific. The sci- 
ence of milling to-day is exact and methodical, 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 1 69 

being, in brief, to produce the utmost from the 
wheat at the least possible cost. The result is 
that the masses are receiving the best, purest, and 
most nutritious, as well as the cheapest flour ever 
known in the world's history. To this one great 
end all milling progress has steadily tended since 
the days of the quern and the saddle-stone. 

Commercially, the millers of the United States 
outrank all others. Their mills are the largest 
and have the greatest capacity. The develop- 




Small American Mill. 

ment since the introduction of the purifier and 
the rolls has been such that American flour now 
competes successfully in all foreign countries from 
which it is not debarred by prohibitory tariffs. 
The number of mills in the United States, as 
shown by the census of 1900, exceeded twenty- 
five thousand, a very large number being mills of 
small capacity. These employed a capital of 
more than 200 million dollars, used nearly 490 
million bushels of wheat annually, producing about 
102 million barrels of flour valued at 348 million 
dollars. For the fiscal year ending June, 1902, 



170 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

the millers of the United States exported nearly 
66 million dollars' worth of flour. Minneapolis is 
the largest flour-producing city in the world. Its 
daily capacity is estimated at 70,000 barrels. 
The largest flour-mill in existence is the Pillsbury 
A, at Minneapolis, with a capacity of 14,000 bar- 
rels daily. In 1902 the output of the Minneapo- 
lis mills was over 16 million barrels ; in 1878, when 
the experimental roller-mill was built, it was 
940,000 barrels. The direct export trade in flour 
from Minneapolis was 109,000 barrels in 1878 ; in 
1902 it was over three million barrels. Other 
milling centres in the United States which pro- 
duce large quantities of flour are New York, 
Milwaukee, St. Louis, Kansas City, Chicago, To- 
ledo, Indianapolis, Superior, and Duluth. Work- 
ing with these centres to produce the enormous 
output of the nation are a large number of 
modern flour-mills, of a capacity exceeding the 
largest mills known in the mill-stone period, scat- 
tered throughout the principal milling States, all 
having their direct foreign and domestic connec- 
tions and doing a thriving and important busi- 
ness. In Great Britain large mills have been 
erected during recent years, principally at the 
ports. Owing to the fact that they are able to se- 
cure American wheat at very low rates of freight, 
and because of the recently imposed tax on flour 
and grain entering Britain, which discriminates in 
favour of the home miller, these and other British 
mills of the modern type are meeting American 
competition and doing a prosperous business. 
France and Germany protect their millers by a 
tariff which prevents foreign competition. In 
these countries milling continues to be a conserv- 
ative and rather sluggish industry not given to 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 171 

many changes. In Canada, owing to the opening 
of the western wheat-fields, there is much activity 
in mill-building, and in the Canadian northwest 
there are several highly important modern milling 
plants which are developing into mills of the lar- 
gest type, doing both a foreign and domestic trade. 




An American Country Mill. 

In New Zealand and Australia flour-milling is an 
important industry, but temporarily at a stand- 
still owing to crop failures. The mills of Buda- 
pesth, Hungary, are fairly prosperous, although 
their flour is no longer in as great demand in 
British markets as it was twenty years ago. In 
Holland, American competition has somewhat 
crippled the Dutch mills; but during 1902, owing 
to the freight discriminations in America against 
flour and in favour of exported wheat, they were 
able to regain some of their lost trade. In 
Belgium, the tariff has driven American flour out 
of the market, but the Belgian millers are far 
from happy owing to ruinous competition between 
themselves. The mills of Russia are seldom heard 



172 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

from in the world's markets, but some of them 
are very modern in their equipment and evidently- 
prospering. In Argentina flour-milling progresses 
slowly, but a few plants are making an effort to 
enter the British markets. In other South Amer- 
ican countries the milling industry is purely local 
in its extent and influence. The British and Amer- 
ican millers are engaged in an interesting struggle 
for the control of the flour trade of the United 
Kingdom, with the advantage in favour of the 
home miller because of the policy of American 
carriers in discriminating against flour for export 
in favour of wheat. The grist-miller all over the 
world is of rapidly diminishing importance, the 
merchant miller with his increased milling capacity 
having limited his trade and curtailed his opera- 
tions. 



CHAPTER XII 

Transportation and tariffs — Britain's exposed position — 
American railways and freight rates — A discriminating 
policy — Its effect on American flour-milling — Traffic 
through the " Soo " canal — Neglected opportunities — 
Wheat " corners " — The Leiter deal — Continental tar- 
iffs — The cheap loaf — Bread riots — British tax on flour 
and grain — Preferential trade — International contest 
for world's chief bread-producer— Harvest calendar — 
Bread the food of civilization — The Anglo-Saxon holds 
the key 

It has been shown that in the production of 
both wheat and flour the United States is far in 
advance of any other nation. It is fortunate for 
the people of other countries that more is pro- 
duced than can be consumed by her own citizens; 
and this condition will probably be perpetuated 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT I 73 

for many years, because not only is the acreage 
susceptible of extension and the yield of material 
increase, but, should national irrigation plans be 
carried out, States which now produce little or no 
wheat will grow large crops ; and, even if this 
should not happen, a shortage or even the pros- 
pect of a shortage in the world's wheat would 
advance the price, and thus stimulate farmers who 
have temporarily abandoned wheat-raising for 
more profitable crops to return again to the cul- 
tivation^ the King of Cereals. It is unsafe to 
make prophecies in connection with wheat, as the 
discomfiture of the prophets of the past has proved ; 
but it does not seem very hazardous to venture 
the opinion that the generation is yet unborn 
which will live to see the time when the United 
States is unable to send flour abroad because it 
does not make sufficient for its own needs. It 
may be taken as a fact that the United States is 
in the business of exporting wheat and flour as a 
permanency, or as long as other nations can afford 
to buy and pay for bread. It may be that Britain 
and other importing countries will have periods 
during which they can secure wheat supplies 
cheaper than from the United States, but until 
newer and more fruitful fields are developed, they 
must in the main depend largely upon America. 
Broomhall's Corn Trade Year-Book for 1902 
says : " Under present conditions it seems quite 
likely that the production of wheat in these islands 
will sink to a mere 20 million bushels, whereas if 
the population increase during the next twenty 
years at the same ratio as it has done in the past 
twenty years, we shall have 50 million people 
to feed who will require nearly 320 million bush- 
els per annum of wheat alone. On this basis 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 175 

the home production will be but 6 or 7 per 
cent, of the total, say four weeks out of the 
twelve months." Broomhall continues : " Xo man 

who is acquainted with the position of food sup- 
plies in Great Britain but knows for a certainty 
that America and Russia together could exact 
any terms from this country m six months by 
simply prohibiting the exportation of grain and 
provisions. How long will it be before America 
alone becomes the arbiter of our fate?" To the 
onlooker it would seem strange that a country in 
such an exposed condition should trifle with its 
source of supply by taxing the imports of wheat 
and endeavouring to discourage especially the 
imports of flour; but this is exactly what the 
statesmen in the British Parliament did recently, 
and no one applauded the act more than the au- 
thority quoted, who is of the opinion that, although 
Britain cannot raise more than 7 per cent, of 
the wheat which will be required to feed her peo- 
ple, her millers are entirely capable of supplying 
them with flour, and that the United States will 
always be quite willing to furnish them with the 
raw material if the manufactured product is dis- 
criminated against. 

While the agriculturists of the United States 
have sowed and reaped, and its millers have ad- 
vanced with the progress of wheat-growing, both 
would have been unable to attain the strong posi- 
tion they now occupy in the world's markets had 
it not been for the co-operation of the inland and 
ocean carriers. It must be admitted that the great 
expansion of the railways of the country and the 
steady reduction in freight rates, accomplished 
by an increase of facilities for moving the traffic 
economically, have been the great factors in the 



176 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

upbuilding of the export trade in wheat and flour. 
The people of no other wheat-growing nation 
have been favoured by as low rates of freight as 
the Americans. The railroad of the west extended 
its rails into promising fields as soon as, and more 
often before, their freight-producing capacity was 
known. In 187 1, when the true quality of spring- 
wheat was discovered, the railroads in the United 
States operated 44,600 miles; in 1897 181,000 miles 
were in operation. The reduction in the rate of 
freight per ton per mile has more than kept pace 
with the increase in mileage ; in 1859-60 the aver- 
age rate was three cents per ton per mile ; in 1896- 
'97 it was four-fifths of a cent. On one railway — 
the Chesapeake and Ohio — the average freight 
rate per ton per mile in 1862 was seven cents; 
in 1897 it was two-fifths of a cent. There exists 
two methods of shipment from the west to the 
Atlantic seaboard — one all rail ; the other, avail- 
able during the season when navigation is open, 
by lake and rail. From 1858 to 1862 the average 
all-rail rate on a bushel of wheat from Chicago to 
New York was 38! cents; from 1863 to 1867 3i| 
cents; during the next five years it fell to 27^ 
cents ; again declining to 21^ cents in 1873— '77 ; 
in 1882 the average for the preceding five years 
was i6 t 7 q cents ; this was reduced during the en- 
suing term to 14^ cents; from 1888 to 1892 it was 
14^ cents, and for the five years ending with 1897 
it was 12^ cents. The reduction in lake and rail 
rates was even greater. From 1857 to 1861 the 
average rate on a bushel of wheat shipped by lake 
and rail from Chicago to New York was 22^ 
cents; from 1847 to I ^^° ft was IO ! cents, and 
from 1893 to 1897 it was less than five cents. 
From New York to Liverpool the cost of carry- 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 177 

ing has been reduced at times to an absurdly low 
figure. In December, 1900, it was only five cents 
per bushel, and since then there have been times 
when it was as low as two cents, and, not infre- 
quently, it has been carried across the ocean as 
ballast. Surely in the matter of reaching the for- 
eign market the wheat-raisers of the United 
States have been given most extraordinary facil- 
ities and rates by the carriers, and they at least 
should have no cause of complaint on this score ; 
indeed the American railways have gone to such 
extremes in their competitive struggle to carry 
western wheat crops that they have very seriously 
injured another industry far more important to 
the country at large than the mere raising of 
grain — the exporting of flour; and the American 
millers have a logical and well-founded grievance 
against a transportation policy which results in 
hauling the raw material at unprofitable rates and 
discriminates against the product made from it. 

For many years the American railways as well 
as the steamships have insisted upon charging a 
far higher rate for carrying export flour than 
wheat. There was a time when a reasonable dis- 
crimination in favour of the raw material was ex- 
cusable. This was during the earlier years of the 
development of the trade abroad in flour, when 
large shipments were not obtainable and cars were 
small and seldom loaded with flour to their maxi- 
mum capacity. In recent years the growing im- 
portance of the American merchant mills and their 
increased foreign trade enabled their operators to 
ship for export in very large quantities — in train- 
loads not infrequently — and to load every car to 
its greatest capacity. Such being the case, there 
exists no good reason why export flour should 



178 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

be discriminated against in the matter of rates, 
except that in the management of many of the 
so-called " trunk lines " reaching the Atlantic sea- 
board there has grown into power a type of auto- 
cratic and automatic railway official who holds 
his place by virtue of long service or the influence 
of powerful stockholders, and who insists on 
maintaining in force an obsolete policy, the un- 
reasonableness and injustice of which he is too 
thick-witted to understand or too stubbornly con- 
servative to admit. This element is as yet suf- 
ficiently strong in railway councils to effectually 
stifle any reform in the direction of fairer traffic 
regulations. 

The reasons why export flour should take the 
same rate of freight as export wheat are so nu- 
merous and self-evident that only the densest and 
most antiquated of railway officials fail to admit 
their soundness. On the broad ground of the 
national welfare, in which railways inevitably 
share, there is everything to say in favour of aid- 
ing, as far as is compatible with self-protection, 
the manufacture within the limits of a country of 
such products as are natural to it and for which 
the raw material is at hand, thus encouraging the 
employment of labour and capital and building 
up an industrial as well as a purely agricultural 
community. There is beyond this, in this par- 
ticular instance, a principle of fair play and jus- 
tice involved which railways should be the last to 
disregard. A quarter of a century ago there was 
only an insignificant demand for American flour 
in Great Britain, and hard wheat itself was not 
imported there from the United States. As al- 
ready related in the preceding chapter, the cour- 
ageous and enterprising American miller went to 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 179 

England, and in the face of the bitterest opposi- 
tion succeeded in creating a market for his flour. 
It was so superior to the average article produced 
in Britain at that time that it soon began to grow 
in favour with the consuming public, displacing 
to a large degree the dark inferior product of the 
old-fashioned mills then existing in the United 
Kingdom. The rapid development of new-process 
milling in the United States and the increasing 
demand for American brands of flour stimulated 
a belated revolution in British milling. In time 
modern roller-mills took the place of the anti- 
quated mill-stone plants, and, adopting machinery 
similar *to the American type, the British miller 
was again able to meet transatlantic competition, 
providing he could secure American wheat to 
grind at a low cost. The demand for the wheat 
itself, therefore, sprang directly from the high 
reputation attained for American flour through 
the long, expensive, and arduous efforts of the 
American miller, who performed the pioneer work 
of introducing the commodity, and demonstrating 
to the consumer its superiority over the British 
article. Finally, beside the matter of national wel- 
fare and the principle of fair play which this dis- 
criminating policy opposes, the direct selfish inter- 
est of the carriers should incline them towards 
fairer treatment of the exporting miller. The 
wheat-crop is moved chiefly during certain months 
of the year. Stimulated by low rates of freight, the 
wheat is hurried out of the country in a movement 
which congests traffic and frequently blocks the 
roads ; cars are scarce, and other and more profit- 
able freights are disregarded and delayed in order 
to accommodate the w T heat exporters. The trans- 
portation interest, both inland and ocean, is best 



180 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

served by a continuous, steady, and regular move- 
ment of freight from west to east, aided as much 
as possible by return freights. It is poorest served 
by irregular shipments at low rates, which congest 
the traffic at one season of the year, making it dif- 
ficult to haul the freight for lack of cars, giving 
nothing to be handled during the rest of the year, 
and finally bringing back no return freights. This 
proposition must certainly be conceded as sound : 
that it is highly desirable from a railway and 
steamship standpoint to have an even, regular, and 
steady supply of freight the year around at mod- 
erate rates rather than an immense amount of 
freight during one season only at low rates. Such 
being the case, the transportation interest pro- 
ceeds during the early portion of the crop year to 
invite enormous freights, to congest its move- 
ments, and to destroy all chance of return freights 
by putting in force a ruinously low cut rate on 
wheat, denying the same to flour on the supposi- 
tion that the movement of flour can come later. 

The result is exactly this : The low rate stimu- 
lates the export of wheat. It enables the foreign 
miller to buy American wheat on a basis far below 
what it costs the American miller. Enormous 
quantities of wheat are hurried abroad at cut 
freight rates until the demands of the foreign 
millers are satiated. Then a lull follows, and the 
transportation interest looks to the neglected 
American miller to supply it with freight, the de- 
mand for wheat from abroad having been satisfied. 
The American miller is anxious to export his flour, 
and endeavours to obtain offers from abroad 
which will enable him to do so. He is, of course, 
met with the competition of the foreign miller, 
who has fortified himself with American wheat 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 181 

carried at a low rate at the beginning of the sea- 
son by the accommodating American transporta- 
tion lines. If he did not have this wheat he could 
not compete at all, as the consuming public has 
been educated to demand a flour equal to that 
made in America. If he had not bought his wheat 
at a less price than the American miller he could 
not compete, because the American can make flour 
cheaper than he. Having been supplied with 
cheap American wheat, however, through the stu- 
pidity and short-sightedness of the carrier, he is 
enabled to make a low price on his flour. This 
price the American miller must meet. In order 
to meet it he must secure a low freight rate. In 
order to get tonnage the carrier must have flour; 
consequently the carrier must give a rate low 
enough to enable the American to effect the sale. 
Hence it finally comes about, if indeed any flour 
is exported at all, that the carrier must take it at 
a rate low enough to meet conditions which it has 
itself created at the beginning of the season. 
Thus the carrier sows the wind in June, July, Au- 
gust, and September, to reap the whirlwind for 
the following eight months of the year. Thus it 
is that the carrier is heard to complain bitterly of 
the low rates on export flour ; and, finally, thus it 
is that the system complained of is stupid, suici- 
dal, and short-sighted, even from the transporta- 
tion standpoint. 

Another point which is ignored by the carrier 
in the consideration of this subject is the tran- 
sient nature of the wheat traffic. One year, if 
there be a surplus of wheat in America and a 
shortage in Europe, American wheat must go 
forward in response to foreign demand. The 
American carrier gets the haul, but the delivery 



1 82 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

of the wheat ends the transaction. There is no 
continuity in the trade, no permanency in the 
traffic. American wheat delivered in Europe adds 
nothing to American steadiness of trade, and 
builds up no permanent basis of commercial in- 
tercourse. It is due to a mere accident of nature 
which gives a shortage in one country and a sur- 
plus in another. The following year Russia may 
be a great wheat exporter, or Argentina. Per- 
haps Europe herself has a good crop, and the 
demand for American wheat slackens. Then the 
American carrier, as a matter of course, loses the 
traffic. The fact that it transported millions of 
bushels one year does not assist it to carry a 
single extra bushel the year after. If, however, 
the American carrier is engaged in transporting 
American flour, the result is far different. The 
flour has an identity impossible to lose or to 
duplicate. Every sack of it carried abroad and 
consumed is an earnest of two sacks to follow 
later. The effect of transporting American flour 
is to establish and build up a permanent and in- 
creasing trade — a trade that can only be supplied 
from American sources by means of American 
carriers ; an exclusive, continuous, and developing 
trade beneficial alike to carrier, miller, and farmer. 
The point is this: American wheat, if not easily 
procurable, can be displaced by wheat from other 
lands — Russia, Argentina, Australia. American 
flour, however, can only come from the United 
States, and can only be carried by American 
transportation lines. The permanency and con- 
tinuity of the flour trade is such, therefore, that 
were there no other arguments to be adduced in 
favour of assisting its growth, this alone would be 
sufficient to warrant a broad-minded, far-seeing 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 183 

transportation interest in not only giving it a fair 
and equal chance, but in actually encouraging it 
by every possible favour in competition with the 
export of wheat. 

In the foregoing the disadvantages of the 
present policy of the carrier have been incom- 
pletely and imperfectly given. From the miller's 
standpoint, it is simply ruinous. Seeking a for- 
eign market with a manufactured product, he 
naturally opposes prejudice and tradition favour- 
able to the home miller. With infinite labour, 
great expense, and dogged tenacity of purpose, he 
finally succeeds in establishing an export trade, 
the profit on which at the best is very small. It 
gives him, however, an additional outlet for his 
product and enables him, by running more stead- 
ily and regularly, to manufacture his whole output 
at less cost. Having finally demonstrated the 
superior value of his flour to the satisfaction of 
the foreign consumer, he naturally expects in 
time to enjoy the fruit of his arduous and intelli- 
gent effort. If America be blessed with plentiful 
crops and there is a shortage abroad, he hopes to 
supply at least a portion of this shortage with the 
product of his mill. He knows that he can make 
flour as cheap as, or cheaper than, his foreign 
competitor. Therefore, if he is given an equal 
show in the matter of freight rates, he can easily 
hold his own with all comers. All his calcula- 
tions are upset, however, by the inscrutable policy 
of the transportation lines, which, in their foolish 
eagerness for tonnage with which to make a show- 
ing in competition with others, seize upon the 
wheat as soon as it is harvested, and by collusion 
with a few favoured wheat-handlers rush it out of 
the country at a ridiculously low freight rate, 



184 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

made surreptitiously and in defiance of law. Be- 
fore the American miller has an opportunity of 
even showing samples of his flour made from the 
new crop, a very large part of the harvest has 
been shipped abroad at rates of freight rigorously 
denied him. He meets in the foreign market a 
competition, in the form of flour made from his 
own wheat, delivered to the local miller at rates 
far below anything he has been able to secure. 
This fearful handicap remains throughout the crop 
year and simply blights and destroys his market. 
The American miller is thus struck with a club 
grown in his own country and kindly presented to 
his enemy by his own short-sighted countryman, 
who blandly comes around later and begs to be 
favoured with a share of his valued business. 

In the summer of 1901 this discriminating 
policy was carried to such a ridiculous extreme 
both by the railroads and the steamship lines that 
the British, German, and Dutch millers were pro- 
vided with a stock of the best American wheat, at 
rates of freight which were nominal, sufficient to 
supply them with raw material during the follow- 
ing year, and by this means alone they were en- 
abled to defy American competition and reduce 
by a very large amount the export flour trade 
from the United States. Since then the trans- 
portation interests have pursued a less reckless 
policy in the matter of discriminating against 
flour, and the American millers are slowly and 
painfully recovering some of the ground they 
lost, but it will be years before their export trade 
recovers from the effects of the attack. It is the 
hope of the American flour manufacturer that the 
effect of the vast railway consolidations, and the 
creation of the recent steamship combination, will 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 185 

be to eliminate from control the - short-sighted 
officials who persist in such unwise discrimina- 
tions. Realizing that every bushel of wheat ex- 
ported unground represents a lost opportunity, 
he confidently expects that the new era in railway 
operation will bring a wider and more liberal 
treatment of such traffic problems. If it does not 
do so, he will assuredly favour Government con- 
trol of the railways. 

Although the increase of railways has been 
very great and the reduction of freight rates sat- 
isfactory, the American farmer and miller expect 
still greater facilities and lower rates. There are 
opportunities awaiting development in various 
directions. The improvement of the Erie Canal 
and the reorganization of its system of freight- 
carrying would enable western products to find 
their way to the ocean without the use of the 
rails by an all-water route extending from Duluth 
to New York, thereby avoiding the expensive 
haul from Buffalo and the extravagant terminal 
charges at New York, which have done so much 
to drive commerce away from that port. An idea 
of the traffic in grain and flour which finds its way 
down the Great Lakes may be obtained from- the 
report of the business done in 1902 at the Sault 
Ste. Marie Canal. More than 76 million bushels 
of wheat and nearly 9 million barrels of flour 
passed through this channel, and the amount of 
money paid for freight into and out of Lake Su- 
perior during the season of 1902 is estimated at 29 
million dollars, while the value of the freight itself 
was about 350 million dollars. The waterways of 
the United States have not been developed as yet 
to anything approaching their full possibilities as 
freight-carriers. Besides the Erie Canal in the 
12* 



1 86 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

east, a neglected opportunity in the west is the 
Mississippi River. Given a proper system of 
transportation and modern freight-carriers, there 
exists no good reason why, through this great 
natural channel which reaches from Minneapolis 
to the port of New Orleans, a very large portion 
of the flour and grain from the northwest for the 
foreign trade should not find an easy and cheap 
outlet, entirely free from the exasperating and 
expensive handicaps imposed by the eastern rail- 
ways and their terminals. 

Two objects interpose between the wheat- 
raiser and his hungry customer, the bread-eater, 
and both are unnatural. Tariffs upon flour and 
grain are imposed in many countries, and serve to 
increase the cost of the loaf by shutting out for- 
eign competition in providing it. u Corners " in 
wheat, whereby the price is advanced to an artifi- 
cial and unnatural basis, are not infrequent. 
These devices are usually the creation of ambi- 
tious Chicago wheat operators, although they 
sometimes originate elsewhere. The last impor- 
tant attempt in this direction was conducted by 
Mr. Leiter, of Chicago, who for a while controlled 
the wheat markets of the world. Never in history 
has an operator in wheat made such a bold at- 
tempt as this young gentleman, and at one time 
in his meteoric career his profits were 5 million 
dollars, but this huge sum and much more was 
lost in the end. Wheat bought by him as low as 
64% cents was forced to $1.85 a bushel. He con- 
trolled at one period 35 million bushels of wheat 
and owned as much as 14 million bushels of ac- 
tual cash wheat. In the course of his famous 
deal he exported and sold 25 million bushels. The 
cause of his final collapse was the early harvest- 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 1 87 

ing of a new crop. In his novel, The Pit, Mr. 
Norris describes the reason for a similar failure 
in words which apply equally well to Leiter's 
disaster. " Corner wheat ! " exclaims the opera- 
tor, " corner wheat ! It's the wheat that has cor- 
nered me. It's like holding a wolf by the ears ; 
bad to hold on, but worse to let go." Then 
followed his downfall. " It was the wheat, the 
wheat ! It was on the move again. From the 
farms of Illinois and Iowa, from the ranches of 
Kansas and Nebraska, from all the reaches of the 
middle west, the wheat, like a tidal wave, was ris- 
ing, rising. Almighty, blood-brother to the earth- 
quake, coeval with the volcano and the whirl- 
wind, that gigantic world-force, that, colossal bil- 
low, Nourisher of the Nations, was swelling and 
advancing." Against such an overwhelming force 
Leiter, like the hero of Mr. Norris's story, was 
unable to stand, and an enormous loss closed his 
career in the wheat market. 

Such manipulations are merely temporary in- 
terruptions to the legitimate course of the world's 
wheat, but tariffs are permanent obstructions de- 
signed to prevent it from seeking its natural level, 
and resulting in additional burdens for struggling 
humanity. The cheap loaf is the requirement of 
the masses, and as such would seem to be a politi- 
cal necessity. In countries where it is made dear 
by tariff regulations, bread-riots and widespread 
dissatisfaction among the people are the ultimate 
and legitimate result ; yet European statesmen still 
cling to such methods of raising revenue under 
the guise of protection to the farmer. If given 
free access to continental markets, the American 
miller and his British competitor could put the 
price of bread far below its present cost to the 



1 88 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

consumer, and at the same time vastly improve 
the average quality and wholesomeness of the 
people's food ; but the tariffs imposed are a bar- 
rier to such a proceeding. In France the duty on 
flour is prohibitory, being from $1.86 to $3.37 a 
barrel; the German tariff, $3.21 a barrel, shuts 
out foreign flour absolutely. Sweden's tariff is 
$1.50 a barrel, that of Spain $2.25, of Belgium only 
34 cents, but sufficient to stifle the foreign flour 
trade and give the native millers a monopoly of 
the business. The duty in Norway is nominal, 
and Holland and Denmark are alone in admitting 
flour free. Great Britain, until the spring of 1902, 
was among the nations which gave flour and 
wheat free welcome to their ports, but at that time, 
under the spur of alleged necessity, her Govern- 
ment reversed its traditional policy, and in prin- 
ciple, although not in the same degree, reverted 
to a system of raising revenue by the taxation of 
foreign grain and flour which was tried nearly 
ninety years ago, and found to be such an utter 
mistake that its downfall. was hailed with univer- 
sal rejoicing among the masses. 

For more than thirty years British ports had 
been absolutely free to all comers who brought 
food to the people. The memory of the obnox- 
ious corn laws had evidently grown faint in the 
minds of the people, and the magnificent struggle 
which was led by Cobden and Bright, and which 
ended in the repeal of these laws, w r as evidently 
forgotten. Nations have short memories; were 
it otherwise, Britain would not have been unmoved 
when Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, Chancellor of the 
Exchequer, proposed in his budget of 1902 to raise 
revenue by going back to the principle of taxing 
the people's food. 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 189 

It is true that the duty was comparatively 
small, that it was not presented as a tariff, but 
under the thinly disguised mask of a " registra- 
tion duty"; it is equally true that the need for 
increased revenue was great, and that other meth- 
ods of taxation had been practically exhausted ; 
furthermore, the pill was coated by the inference 
that the measure was merely temporary. The 
insidious and apologetic manner of its introduc- 
tion suggested the mental attitude of the half- 
remorseful peculator who takes a small, a very 
small, amount from the till which he should con- 
sider sacred, because his need is very great and 
the " loan " is only temporary. Disguise it in any 
and every possible way, the fact remains that the 
tax on foreign flour and grain was the re-enact- 
ment in embryo of the universally reviled corn 
laws. The difference between the act of 1815 
and that of 1902 was that of degree only. The 
bread-box of the people is a sacred charge, and 
when a government under sore temptation dips 
its hand into it and pinches therefrom ever so 
small a particle, it has taken a step on the down- 
ward course which logically ends in bread riots 
and starvation. 

The present British tax is 3^. on 112 pounds 
of wheat and $d. on the same amount of flour and 
its products ; as it affords considerable protection 
to flour made in the United Kingdom, it is ex- 
ceedingly welcome to the British miller, for whom 
it comes at an opportune time. With this aid 
from the Government, and "the kindly co-opera- 
tion of the American railways in giving him 
wheat carried to his door at a much lower rate 
than that given American flour, he feels quite 
prepared to meet any foreign competition that 



190 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

may seek his markets, and he may well be. Be- 
tween Britain and Canada and other colonies 
there is much discussion of preferential trade 
which may ultimately result in action, but so far 
as wheat is concerned, Britain would take great 
chances in discriminating against her present 
sources of supply in favour of Australia and New 
Zealand, where the crop is uncertain, or even 
Canada, where early frosts are apt to occur, as 
they did in 1902, and greatly damage the value of 
the wheat. Should such arrangements be made 
to the detriment of American importations, Brit- 
ain will be almost certain some year to find her- 
self short of flour, in which case her people, being 
hungry, are quite equal to an assertion of their 
right to cheap bread, regardless of political plans 
and pestilential rather than preferential, will des- 
ignate their opinion of a trade which denies this 
necessity to them. 

In 1901 the crop returns of the principal na- 
tions of the world placed the producers of wheat 
in the following order : 



1. United States. 

2. Russia. 

3. France. 

4. India. 

5. Austro-Hungary. 

6. Germany and Italy. 

7. Canada. 

As already explained, many of these countries 
do not raise enough to supply their own needs, 
and are therefore importers of wheat. 

Viewed from any standpoint, the international 
contest for the position of purveyor-in-chief to 
the world's bread-basket is an intensely interest- 



8. United Kingdom. 

9. Australasia. 

10. Argentina. 

11. Belgium. 

12. Holland. 

13. Sweden. 

14. Denmark. 



THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 191 

ing one. The great centres of demand stand still 
while the centres of supply retreat, modern trans- 
portation systems supply the connecting chain 
which keeps the world from going hungry. Of 
this there is no danger, for nature, to the confu- 
sion of the speculator, has arranged a wheat cal- 
endar whereby during every month of the year 
somewhere on the earth's surface a crop of wheat 
is harvested. In January, Australasia, Chili, and 
Argentina; in February and March, East India 
and Upper Egypt ; in April, Lower Egypt, Asia 
Minor; and Mexico ; in May, Algeria, Central Asia, 
China, Japan, and Texas ; in June, Turkey, Spain, 
southern France, California, Tennessee, Virginia, 
Kentucky, Kansas, Utah, and Missouri; in July, 
Roumania, Austro-Hungary, southern Russia, 
Germany, Switzerland, France, southern England, 
Oregon, Nebraska, southern Minnesota, Wiscon- 
sin, Colorado, Washington, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, 
Michigan, Ohio, New York, New England, east- 
ern Canada; in August, Holland, Belgium, Great 
Britain, Denmark, Poland, western Canada, the 
Dakotas ; in September and October, Scotland, 
Sweden, Norway, North Russia ; in November, 
Peru and South Africa ; in December, Burmah 
and Argentina. Thus the year around seed-time 
and harvest succeed each other, and somewhere 
wheat is always coming into market. Wheaten 
bread is the universal food of civilization, and 
whatever happens in the race for ascendency 
in the world's markets, this seems assured : the 
Anglo-Saxon possesses the key to the world's 
wheat supplies at present, and is apt to hold it 
against all comers, at least during the twentieth 
century. 



INDEX 



A. 

Abandonment of mill-stones, 164. 

./Egilops ovata, 32. 

Alberta, 115. 

Allis, Edward P., & Co., 164. 

American farmers emigrating to 

Canada, 116 ; millers' relief for 

peasants, 63 ; wheat-fields, in ; 

grain elevators, 108. 
Argentine wheat, 70 ; railways, 73 ; 

wheat exports, 78. 
Assiniboia, 114. 
Asiatics as bread-eaters, 69. 

B. 

Bennett, Richard, 137. 

Booza, 38. 

Britain, its exposed condition, 175. 

British wheat market, 57. 

Broomhall, 173. 

Budapesth and roller-milling, 166. 

Buenos Ayres, 73. 



Canada, development of, 120. 
Canadian northwest, 122 ; wheat 

crops, 112. 
Cattle mills, 142. 
Chinch-bugs, 18. 
Chinese milling, 103 ; wheat, 33. 
Christian, George H., 162. 
Corn Trade Year-Book, 173. 

D. 

De Candolle, 34. 

Dee mills, 136. 

Discrimination in freight rates 

against flour, 177. 
Domesday Survey, 144. 
Dunwoody, William H., 163. 



E. 

Egyptian wheat, 34 ; methods of 

thrashing grain, 38. 
England s needs, 175. 
Erie Canal, 185. 

Euphrates and Tigris valleys, 30. 
Evans, Oliver, 148, 151. 

F. 

Famine relief, 63. _ 
Farming methods in Argentina, 71. 
Feudal milling customs, 144. 
Flour exports from United States, 

170. 
Flour-mill, largest in world, 170. 
Flour-mills in United States, 151, 

169. 
Frauenfeld roller-mills, 167. 
Freight rates, reduction of, in 

United States, 176 ; lake and rail 

rates. 176. 
French wheat, 47. 
Frost and Canadian wheat, 130. 
Frumentu sarvaggiu, 32. 



Gardner, Stephen, 161. 

German wheat, 48. 

Grasshoppers, 21 ; methods of de- 
stroying, 21 ; plague in Minne- 
sota, 23. 

Gray, William D., 165. 

Great Britain's tax on foreign grain 
and flour, 189. 

Greek millers, 143. 

Grist-mills, 148. 

H. 

Hand-stone, 133. 
Health foods, 18. 
Helfenburger, 167. 

193 



194 THE STORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 



Herodotus, 34. 

Hicks-Beach, Sir Michael, 18 
High grinding, 161. 
Hill, James J., 105. 
History of corn-milling, 137. 
Hunger-bread, 62. 

I. 

Indian wheat, 56. 

J. 

Japanese milling, 105. 



Klippart, 87. 



K. 



L. 



La Croix, Edmund N., 156. 
Largest flour-mill in the world, 170. 
Leiter, 186. 

M. 

Macaroni wheat, 96. 

Manitoba, 114. 

Merchant mills, 150. 

Mesopotamia, 34. 

M ill explosion in Minneapolis, 164 ; 
of twentieth century, 168. 

Mill-stones, 133 ; become obsolete, 
167. 

Millers' National Association, 158. 

Millers at Minneapolis in 1872, 163. 

Milling, early methods, 133 ; by 
primeval man, 133 ; in ancient 
times, 133, 134 ; among aborigi- 
nals, 133, 134 ; among Hebrews, 
134 ; in Argentina, 172 ; in Aus- 
tralasia, 171 ; in Belgium, 171 ; in 
Budapesth, 171 ; in Canada, 171 ; 
in Egypt, 134 ; in England at 
time of Conquest, 144 ; in Great 
Britain, 170 ; in Holland, 171 ; in 
Russia, 171 ; in United States 
commercially, 170 ; at beginning 
of Christian era, 136 ; at end of 
eighteenth century, 146 ; jour- 
nals, origin of, 153 ; progress from 
1800 to 1870, 152 ; census, 169 ; 
centres in America previous to 
new process, 154 ; centres in 
United States, 170 ; revolution in 
America, 150, 161 ; profits after 
introduction of new process, 170 ; 
soke, 138. 

Minneapolis as a milling centre, 170. 

Mir, 64. 



Mississippi River, 186. 
Mola versatilis, 136. 
Mortar, 134. 
Mummy wheat legend, 41. 

N. 
Norag, 39. 

Norse mills, 137, 143. 
Northwestern States, development 
of, 155. 

O. 
Ohio limit, 87. 
Oriental flour trade, 103. 
Origin of cultivated plants, 17. 
Osiris, 32. 

P. 

Perrigault, 156. 
Pillsbury, Charles A., 162. 
Pioneer spring-wheat millers, 161. 
Pistores, 135. 
Pistrinum, 135. 
Pit, The, 187. 
Pompeian mills, 142. 
Postel, 95. 
Pounders, 133. 
Preferential trade, 190. 
Purifier, 155 ; its story, 156 ; litiga- 
tion in America, 158. 

Q. 

Querns, 136; struggle to retain 
them, 139 ; their suppression, 139. 

R. 

Railway facilities for handling 
wheat, 176 ; mileage, United 
States, 176. 

Railways. Canadian, 120. 

Reciprocity between Canada and 
the United States, 120. 

Registration duty, 189. 

River Plate, 72. 

Roller-mill, first, in America, 165. 

Roller-mills, porcelain and marble, 

l6 7- 
Roller-milling, origin of, 164. 
Rolls, chilled iron, 165. 
Roman mills, 143. 
Roumanian wheat, 53. 
Russian famine, 60 ; wheat, 50. 
Rust, 19. 

S. 

Saddle-stone, 132. 
Saskatchewan, 114. 



INDEX 



195 



Sault Ste. Marie, traffic of, 185. 
Slave mills, 141. 
Smith, Kingsland, 83. 
Smith Purifier Company, 158. 
Smut, 19. 

Spanish wheat, 46. 
Spring-wheat, 98. 
Steam-mill, the first, 145. 
Sulzberger, Jakob, 166. 
Switzerland, birthplace of roller- 
milling, 166. 

T. 

Tariff, Canadian, 119; demand for 
reduction in United States, 124 ; 
on flour and grain, 189 ; barrier 
between Canada and United 
States, 124 ; French, on flour, 188 ; 
German, on flour, 188; Sweden, on 
flour, 188 ; Spain, on flour, 188 ; 
Belgium, on flour, 188 ; Great 
Britain, on flour and wheat, 188. 

Transportation facilities of United 
States, 176. 

Tread-mills, 148. 

Triticum aestivum, 100. 

Triticum hibernum, 100 ; monococ- 
cum, 38 ; turgidum, 37 ; vulgare, 
100; vulgare antiquerum, 33. 

U. 

Unger, 37. 

United States, its strategic position, 
172. 



W. 

Washburn, Governor C. C, i6r. 

Washington as a miller and farmer, 
90. 

Water-mills, 148. 

Waterways of United States, 185. 

W T eggmann, 165. 

Wheat and flour on Pacific coast, 
100 ; ancient culture of, 32 ; aver- 
age yields, 55 ; character of Ar- 
gentine, 78 ; chemical changes, 
26 ; corners in, 186 ; crops in 
Europe, 46 ; crops in the United 
States, 97 ; cultivation after the 
civil war, 99 ; duty on, in United 
States, 121 ; elements, 25 ; Euro- 
pean countries, order of produc- 
tion, 190 ; its origin, 30 ; harvest 
calendar, 191 ; in Argentina, 70 ; 
in the Bible, 43 ; in Canada, 112 ; 
in modern times, 44 ; in United 
States, 84, 88 ; in the United 
States in i860, 96 ; kernel, 27 ; 
limit of production, 28 ; produc- 
tion in United Kingdom, 46 ; pro- 
duction in Europe, 55 ; prophecy, 
97 ; prophets, 91 ; prospects in 
Canadian northwest, 130 ; wild, 
30 ; yield in Canada, 115. 

Wheat Plant, The, 87. 

Wilkinson, Sir Gardner, 38. 

Wind-mills, 145 ; of Holland, 145. 

Winter-wheat, 100. 

World's wheat crop, 55. 



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